What is imaginative play?
Imaginative play involves children imagining that they are a different person or character or they are experiencing different scenarios and taking on a new role. Examples of imaginative play include dressing up, playing with dolls and soft toys, playing games which involve different characters, such as mums and dads when different children play different members of the family and playing with small world toys, such as dolls’ houses and pretend garages.
Why is imaginative play important?
Imaginative play allows children to experience different situations and emotions and gives them an understanding of how the world works and the roles different things have in the world. Imaginative play enables children to have fun and build relationships with other children, as well as developing their imagination and creativity. Different types of play allow children to develop different skills, emotions and learn new things. For example, sensory play allows children to explore their senses and gives them a sensory experience.
Types of imaginative play
As children develop and grow, their sense of imagination will also mature and they will start imagining different roles and modes of behaviour for the people and things they come across. For example, if they have a stuffed toy dog, they may treat it like a real dog and make it walk along the floor, make barking noises as if the dog were barking and pat it, like they would do a real dog.
There are different types of imaginative play, including:
- Role play and dressing up: most children love dressing up; it enables them to take on a new persona, act a role and imitate people or things they have seen or know well. You may find that your children try on your clothes and shows from an early age and start to do things you would normally do; they may pretend to hoover or talk to somebody on the phone, for example. You can buy ready-made dressing up outfits, including firemen, doctors, superheroes, nurses, animal costumes and many more, but children usually find their own props to use around the house.
- Miniature world: miniature world toys, like model villages, model trains and cars, garages, dolls houses and farmyards are popular with most children. The children learn about the figures they have and as they develop a greater understanding, they will start to act out stories with them and give them different characters and personalities.
- Soft toys and dolls: many children use their soft toys as a kind of virtual family; they will have tea parties together, they will go on imaginary adventures together and your child will probably make great friends with them. Children often build strong relationships with their soft toys and they make experience a vast range of emotions, ranging from love to anger and frustration as a result of playing with soft toys; many parents will be familiar with the sight of their child telling their soft toy off or dropping their doll on the floor; this behaviour helps to enable children to learn how to control their emotions.
- Domestic play: although most of us get bored doing the household chores, domestic chores are a favourite game for many young children. Many like to copy their mums and dads and join in the cleaning and tidying and as they develop, they will start to imagine themselves as the head of a household; lots of children like playing in the home corner at nursery or home, where they will act out daily activities, such as cooking, cleaning and ironing.
Disabled children often have impaired senses and some rely on other senses to make up for the ones that they lack. For example, children with visual impairment may rely on their sense of hearing more.