Creative Play

I encouraged imagination and creative play. I think it helps a child's brain develop and for them to learn social issues in a non-confrontational way. In psychological terms it helps them to create executive brain functioning, the main skill for a three year old would be the development of self-regulation (KEY if you want anyone to like your child). So psychologists suggest ways to foster this is instead of giving your children games or toys that are structured to one thing, give them tools for them to create things. Like, instead of buying dresses for your little girl to dress up in with princess names, etc. You create a dress up box full of different types of materials, clothes pins, ties, etc. So that they have to create their own. A piece of black fabric can be a cougar one day, and a witch the next! Another example would be, if you buy your kid a play kitchen, don't buy them food for it, buy them pots and pans and utensils, but if they are forced to only cook the foods that are there then they won't use their imagination. So no foods means they can imaginatively create any sort of meal! (Tre seems to be lacking in this area, right now he only cooks noodles and eggs, does this speak to my kitchen abilities?)

For Christmas my parents helped me in my endeavor to foster creative play and bought him this set of things, it is for kids to create their own obstacle courses, or games, or anything really (but a very physical type of set, great for boys who are moving all the time, I don't know if an art set or cloths and pins would hold his attention at this point.). So we have been doing much creative play in our basement. We are forgs on a hunt for food, and we leap from lily pad to lily pad, we travel the world with our walking sticks and climb through worm holes to other dimensions, etc. We also do obstacle courses. But, yesterday I was in the basement and I kept hearing these strange noises from upstairs. When I went up, this is what I found...

Talk about creative play! He had taken a glass globe (not ideal, but very smart- the right weight to knock over his pins, and small enough for him to fist) and turned it into a bowling ball, then he had set up his snow boots at the end of our hallway and was bowling snow boots! It was ingenious, and I was so proud! And it didn't involve buying anything!