Imagination

Here are some ideas to help develop children’s imaginative play:

provide lots of materials to imagine with. Different children will be drawn to different things – some like playing at “home”, others like to dress up, others enjoy pretending to be firemen or farmers or … Following the child’s interests is best at first
children can only pretend about things they know about. So feed the child’s imagination with lots of stories, and chats about real world things. Chat about what the doctor does, or about where that fish lorry might be going. Don’t worry about being a bit silly to get the child involved
allow a free flow. If the child thinks that spaghetti goes with ice cream (when pretending!) then that’s fine
model imaginative play yourself, and say what you are doing. “I’m pretending to be a train. Choo Choo.”

Play@Home has some great games to promote imagination, such as:

bumps to bairns