The Art and Science of Pretend Play

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As educators and parents, we often focus on the measurable milestones in a child’s life. They know 100 words, can trap a soccer ball, know their times tables, or have memorized all the countries in Asia: all accomplishments about which we proudly boast. And we should! Those are exciting achievements. But there is an aspect of education that often gets brushed off as cute but unnecessary. Creative or pretend play is sometimes seen as a less valuable use of a child’s time and a school’s resources because the skills learned are less quantifiable than other more traditional academic pursuits. That’s understandable, but a little misguided. Here is why imaginative play is so important for your child’s mental development and how you can encourage it.

Let’s start with the heavy hitters. Pretend play is the gateway to symbolic thought. When children pretend, they are substituting one object for another. The red ball becomes an apple they pretend to eat, that old box is now a rocket ship sending them to the moon! This directly correlates to the ability to think symbolically later on.

Symbolic thinking is the ability to understand that a symbol, like the number three, for example, can stand in for an idea, in this case, a set of three identical objects. Later in their education, this will be vital.  Without symbolic thinking, you can never learn to read because the letter “D” doesn’t actually mean anything. It is a representation of the sound “Duh.” When all those symbols get strung together the sounds they represent make a word, which also doesn’t mean anything. “Dog” is the symbolic word in English for the furry animal that likes to eat bones and say woof.

This means that pretend play and symbolic thinking are literally the foundation of our language skills! But it doesn’t stop there. As your child engages in pretend play, they are naturally creating a story, a logical sequence of events. And they are predicting what comes next in their story. Both sequencing and inferencing are two vital skills for reading comprehension. Because what good is learning to read all those symbols if you don’t understand the story they are telling?

And those are just the academic benefits of creative play. We can’t forget the long-term effects it will have on a child’s life. The Harvard Business Review has listed Creativity/Creative Problem Solving among employers’ most sought-after work skills for several years running. This is because they are not skills that can be replaced by automation. Computers can be taught efficiency but at the end of the day, they can’t go beyond their programming to innovate. This means creative individuals with the technical skills to manifest their ideas will always be in demand.

Let me put it another way. A child’s ability to look at a bedsheet and say “it could be a cape, or a tent, or a ghost, or a flag, or a canvas!” is the stepping stone that allows them as an adult to say “I know we designed the widget to do this, but it’s an emergency so what if we used it this way instead.”

All of those benefits are just the tip of the iceberg. Language development, fine and gross motor skills, cooperation, communication…the list of vital life skills goes on and on and on. But many parents, especially those who aren’t naturally creatively inclined, get intimidated by the idea of encouraging pretend play. I have a few simple games I suggest to parents and teachers to help get the creative juices flowing.

“What’s Their Story?”

Sitting in a traffic jam and you just can’t listen to “baby shark” one more time? Turn off the tunes and ask your child where they think the person in the car next to you is going. Are they going to the park? To see their grandma? To the moon? Once you have established a destination, help them build a story by asking leading questions with no correct answer. What will they do when they get there? Did they pack a suitcase or a picnic basket? What’s inside of it?

“This Is Not A…”

Ever heard this, “I have nothing to play with, I’m boooooooored!!!!”? My go-to fix harkens back to my improv days. Grab the closest object to you and proclaim “This is not a blank (laundry basket). This is a blank (sled)!” Then hand the child the item and say, “what can you make it?” They might say a hat, a fishing net, a car etc. If you have space encourage the child to act out how you would use the object, for example, putting the basket on your head when you say hat. Go back and forth, each of you taking a turn transforming the object until you run out of ideas and then pick a different item. If you are on the go, your purse or backpack is a treasure trove of ordinary items waiting to be turned into extraordinary ones!

The Big Box

An oldie but goodie, this was my favorite rainy-day activity as a kid. Save the next big delivery box (or boxes) you get. Bring out crayons and stickers and tell the kids you have granted them the power of imagination and they can now turn this box into anything; a robot, a castle, a submarine…the sky is the limit.

We Can Do Better Than That!

Don’t buy it if you can make it. Do they desperately want the super cool pop-up tent their friend posted on Instagram? We can do better than that. A one of a kind customized fort! Let them scavenge the house for unused items and figure out how to engineer it. Stacks of books, old sheets, and the Christmas lights you never put away suddenly become the world’s coolest and most exclusive clubhouse. The same goes for Halloween costumes, phone or computer cases, jewelry…anything that you pay for, they could probably make a cooler and more innovative version themselves.

Spoon Full of Sugar

Make chores fun! Within reason, let them use those imaginations to make the dreary extraordinary. If your little one wants to set the table by turning the plates into a race car steering wheel, let them. At the very least the job will get done fast. Need them to help clean the bathroom sink? Tie a scarf around their nose like an old cowboy movie, hand them the bottle and towel and proclaim them the germ buster! Mary Poppins was correct; the sweet stuff helps the medicine go down.

KEEP READING: Shifting Schools Towards Sustainability: Tips From People Who Made It Happen

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