Young children learn and explore everything around them through imagination and through play. Have you ever seen a child pick up a rock pretending it was a car, a piece of paper pretending to be a boat, the bucket of water was the sea, and the child dropped the paper into the bucket of water pretending to be a boat in the sea? When children are playing in pretend play, they are playing as if something or someone is real.
The child is creating a situation where there is a lot going on in its own right. Like a child who can put a cup over the doll’s mouth and then put the doll on the bed – but with the baby the doll is alive and really alive (and can even burp) and when the doll is put on the bed, the real doll sleep – and so the child will wait until the doll wakes up.
Do parents ever listen when children engage in pretend play with toys or with their friends? Parents will probably hear some words or phrases and never think kids know! In fact, we often hear our own words reflected in our child’s play. Children can make a perfect imitation of their parents or teachers. In addition, by pretend play with others, children learn that words are a vehicle for re-enacting a story or process of play. Pretend play provides opportunities to expose children to new vocabulary, with different situations helping children expand their vocabulary. Children can imagine spending an afternoon at the airport, an entire morning in a hospital, learning all the different words associated with those situations.
Pretend play helps children expand their understanding, but it also helps reduce anxiety when the language and situations are unfamiliar. Personal vocabulary develops as children begin to use appropriate words in context. Through pretend play and role-play, children learn to choose words carefully so that others understand what they are trying to express. obtain. In turn, children learn to listen to what others have to say, as they must do this to understand what is going on around them and how they fit as an essential skill to learn anything at all school.
Some benefits of pretend play:
When children engage in pretend play, they are actively experimenting with the social and emotional roles of life. Through cooperative play, children learn to take turns, share responsibilities, and creatively problem solve. When your child pretends to be different characters, they experience and feel that emotion, which helps teach the important moral development skill of empathy, and learning to cooperate, to be responsible. responsibility and how to share responsibility. It is normal for young children to see the world from their selfish point of view. Experimental pretend play, children begin to recognize and learn to respond positively to the feelings of others.
When children role-play a situation, they play together. Children must agree on a topic and discuss roles in situations and rules of play. All this requires mutual understanding and cooperation. Pretend play also helps children in developing their self-esteem and confidence, a sense of creativity in pretend play is a way. experiences and builds confidence, helping children experience and express positive and negative emotions. Children learn how to regulate these emotions, how to respond to them positively, manage their anger, learn good manners, positive behavior and in some cases how to reduce aggression.
Pretend play provides children with many problems to solve. Whether it’s two kids wanting to play the same role or searching for the right toy to make the roof of the house, your child needs important cognitive thinking skills that he or she will use in every aspect. of everyday life, and this will help the child into adulthood. Memories are formed through pretend play. Children use the images they have created in their minds to act out past experiences in pretend play.
This form of abstract thinking helps children find what happened in situations, learn to collect and manage their thoughts and reactions to the situation, and solve problems that they can. encountered and children know how to overcome difficulties next time .
For example, setting up a table for a meal, calling a family member on the phone, or maybe a trip to the dentist. Pretend play can help children develop math, reading and writing skills if the toy tools are used appropriately. Pretend play helps children better understand science, the larger world in which they live, and important world events happening around them.
Early pretend play strengthens children’s capacity for cognitive flexibility and creativity. By engaging in an imaginative game, children will have the opportunity to practice, use their imagination, train their brain to think, create and learn to think for themselves. The ability to use our imagination is a skill knowledge that we all require throughout life and we need to encourage children to learn to do this with regular opportunities for imaginative play. It is the development of imagination in childhood that we as adults are able to perform most of the tasks that everyday life requires.
As Albert Einstein once said, “Logic will get you from A to Z, imagination will take you everywhere”. Right! Adults must use their imaginations every day to help them solve problems, plan, develop, and discover or invent new things. It is an essential element for understanding and creative thinking.
Aside from all the amazing cognitive benefits that pretend play offers, it’s important to remember that pretend play is regularly physical and a great way for children to move, exercise, and develop their skills. motor skills. Gross motor skills are put to good use as pilots run around, firefighters climb ladders and slide down slides, horses gallop across fields. Fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination are improved when children try to dress dolls with clever clothes, spend money to pay for items they bought in the store, or perform tricks. cooking with a variety of ingredients.
Even in situations where the game pretends to be strong, evidence suggests that a role-playing game involves roughing, provided that this is well followed and doesn’t go too far, can help develop the frontal lobe, the front part of the brain, regulate behavior. Instead of prohibiting, allowing children to play physically, if this is what they love to do, helps children learn to regulate and understand when one behavior is not allowed and another is allowed.
Pretend play is not a game just for girls, it is a game developed for boys. Currently, when going to the clinic, many parents are not really secure when letting their boys play this game because it is not for safety reasons but for fear that “boys playing with dolls will affect gender”. Therefore, through this lesson, we hope that parents will understand more about the importance of pretend play, play together with children, encourage what children want to do, let children’s imaginations develop and not be dominated by others. other factors for children to develop in the most comprehensive way.
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