Washing a Toy Baby

Washing a Toy Baby – Imaginative play is essentially when children are role playing and are acting out various experiences they may have had or something that they are interested in.  They are experimenting with decision making on how to behave and are also practising their social skills.  Children learn from experience: from what happens around them, from what they see, hear, smell, taste and touch.   To absorb those experiences and make sense of the world, they need to be engaged in an imaginary play.

To help promote this imaginary play, we as parents can provide props and toys.

Let’s Play 

Rub-a-dub-dub baby gets a bath and rinsing off the bubbles.

Watching Mum and Dad washing a baby sibling is an example of an experience that children copy and re-enact.   Watching and learning from this experience then practising, imitating and experimenting this through imaginary play.

The props and toys we have provided are a plastic container for a bath, a wash cloth, soap, cup, toothbrush and towels to support this imaginary play.  My girls later added some of their own props throughout their imaginary play.

Let’s Pretend 

It’s time to wash the hair with a small amount of soap.  Notice the toys in the bath, the girls ran off and put these in for their baby to play with.

Let’s Learn 

Don’t forget to brush your teeth and time to  dry off!

Imaginative play is beneficial for children’s development because:

• Provides opportunities for children to identify with the adult world.
• Social development: practising negotiation skills turn taking and sharing. Provides opportunities for working out problems and experimenting with solutions.
• Emotional development: Understanding their feelings through the re-enactment of certain experiences.
• Imagination: Children can be anyone and do anything in the pretend world.
• Taking on roles that encourage discipline and empathy.