Why Is Pretend-play Important For Children?

By Author: chandra
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Children are curious and explore their surroundings with great interest. They take in whatever they observe and try to imitate it. This is called pretend play. While most adults might take it as child's play, it has more to it. Kids develop essential life skills, creativity, and empathy through it.

You can encourage them in this by providing interactive toys. It keeps them engaged and provides direction to their imagination. It is a great way to utilise their innocent way of seeing things for learning. There are many lessons they get from it which helps them when they grow older.

Following are the reasons for the importance of pretend play:

Boost imagination: Most of the things that kids do during pretend play comes from imagining. They make scenarios and act on them. Have you seen how they playhouse with their friends? They creatively assign different roles for each of them. They treat simple things like a table as a kitchen or a cardboard box as a car.

Develop language skills: Have you ever noticed kids during imaginary play? They talk a lot and use words and phrases that you have not heard from ...
... them. This is because they are impersonating you and others around them. It enables them to associate language with conversation. It helps them understand its impact on conveying their thoughts.

Knowledge into practice: Kids learn many things in different ways. They do this by observing, asking, and playing. They use the traits they learn during dramatic play. Notice them when they interact with their soft toys. They give them names, take care of them, tell them stories, teach them what they learn. This way, they unknowingly use their learnings. You can encourage this by giving them interactive toys for kids.

Builds emotional intelligence: Taking on a role they see daily in their lives helps kids understand its responsibility. The make-believe set up with others involves agreeing on roles, deciding duties and rules. It develops their coordination and collaboration skills. They also recognise the challenges of the parts they enact and how it affects others. This leads to awareness of thoughts, feelings, and opinions.

Learning about roles: Pretend play involves the enactment of what kids see around them. They mimic your actions and what you do. It teaches them about your role in society. They learn about different professions like doctors, police, firefighters, homemakers, etc. They understand the value of these positions. Toys like a kitchen set, science kits, doctor gadgets, etc., enable them to do such enactments.

Helps with physical development: Imaginary play requires them to interact and move around. It could involve dressing up, getting things from one place to another, organising, etc. All these activities combined are great for physical growth. They depict the energy of everyday lives. They develop fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, mannerisms, etc.

Interactive play is both fun and informative for kids, whether playing with soft toys or role kits.

Chandra is a toy store manager with 10-plus years of experience. She loves to look up and write about different toys and kids' latest trends in her free time. In this article, she has explained the importance of pretend play with interactive toys