Learning While Pretending

Pretend play is important for building many different developmental skills such as language, thinking, social and emotional skills.  The best part is they are learning while pretending and imagining!

Recently, while cleaning out one of our kitchen cabinets I had a bunch of food boxes and instead of tossing them I used them for a pretend play grocery store.

Here's what I used to set up our grocery store pretend play:

Paper
Pen
Play money
Toy cash register
Empty food boxes/containers
Toy carriage
Plastic grocery bags
Toy purse/wallet

I began by setting up the empty food boxes and containers around the house.  I wrote a grocery list but because my 4 year old can not read yet, I told her what the word on the list was.  As she 'shopped' she had to match the word on the list to the word/letters on the item.  Some of the items she simply remembered from our own 'real' trips to the grocery store.

As she shopped she crossed off items from her list just like Mommy does!  Once she found all the things on the list it was time to check out.  I set up her toy cash register had some plastic grocery bags ready and gave her some play money.  After I rang up all the items I told my daughter how much money she owed.  At this point I had her count out how many dollars she needed so that she could pay for her groceries.

Finally, she was ready to load up her carriage with all her goodies and off she went........"thanks for shopping - come again!!"

Their are many ways to share pretend play with your child.  Most times you don't have to 'set up' anything.  Children tend to pretend play and use their imaginations on their own.  However, here are some other ideas to encourage pretend play with your child:

Dress up clothes
Stuffed animals
Dolls
Books
Cardboard box
Blankets
Paper
Envelopes
Stickers
Crayons

How does your child pretend play?  Share with us in the comments below or visit us on our Facebook page.