pretend play & imagination

Early Learning Teaching Your Child - Other Topics
1

Hi there,

I am looking for information on the development of imagination/storytelling and comprehension through pretend play.

My boy spends most of his day in pretend land be it jungles or space or some other wondrous place and we have a lot of fun with it. He’s almost three.

I really want to understand this process better so I can take advantage of what is obviously the right time for him cognitively to develop this area. He is currently very dramatic and excessively expressive in all of his emotions as he plays with this idea of dramatisation, he really can be quite funny, although there’s always the flip side when it’s dramatic about having hurt feelings because there’s no more blue paint lol

If any one knows of any articles or other helpful material you could direct me to it would be much appreciated.

2

Go read the book …oh shoot, what is it called? Oh yes, Tools of the mind.

http://www.amazon.com/Tools-Mind-Vygotskian-Childhood-Education/dp/0130278041

I got about half way through and had a huge stack of other more pressing books so I did not get to finish it, but it’s an interesting read.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stojavascript:void(0)ry.php?storyId=76838288

I looked for a school like this by us but there aren’t any, I think we will settle for Montessori instead. I have seen some of the processes discussed in the book regarding self control as outer dialogue becomes internal dialogue. I discovered DD repeating things out loud to herself unprompted that we have reinforced countless time, I think the first I said, hey, Vygotsky discusses that! lol

3

Thanks for the link - my daughter also spends most of her time in imaginery land now and has done for a while. She is 3.5. She does however expect us to enter her world where she is always in charge and we must be whoever she says. Would love to know what is the best response to this as we cannot always play with her though we do often. I also wonder if you can have too much imaginery play as she is not really interested in anything else - the only way I can get her to read now is to tell her we can act out what she reads and use it in an imaginery game afterwards.