Encouraging Imaginative and Creative Play

This week, our article comes from Vancouver-based Play Therapist and Clinical Counselor, Kathy Eugster. 

Kathy covers a broad swath of the background behind the development of imaginative and creative play, and provides an immense library of practical and specific ideas for stretching our children's play repertoires!

Kathy's ideas are geared towards children of all abilities, but many of her comments fit our children and our practice perfectly, and bring up some relevant issues and questions. 

Children need a clean and organized space for play. This means you will need to organize and set up the play area yourself. It also means you will need to facilitate clean up at the end of playtime, and that likely you will be doing quite a bit of the clean up and organizing yourself, especially for younger children. Even though it is important to encourage your child to help in cleaning up the toys, it is your job to provide your child with a clean and organized space and with the necessary toys and materials for creative and imaginative play. 

Setting up our play spaces and keeping them clean is something that comes up often between our staff, and it rings true in Kathy's writing. As our centre expands, our play spaces change, and with that change comes a new appreciation for how absolutely sacred those spaces are. 

It is crucial for us to keep those spaces neat, so others can come and play - and to respect each other in those spaces by allowing all kids the opportunity to either join in what's already going on, or carve out their own area for imaginative and creative play. It is so easy to become possessive or defensive or those spaces, especially when our child is super engaged or excited about a new play idea. Those moments can be transcendant, but we still need to be mindful that everyone has an opportunity for the same experience. 

If your child is playing with other children, your job is to supervise the play. Don't expect to leave them on their own and that things will go smoothly without your intervention. You will need to monitor the play and intervene before things get out of control and tempers are lost between the playmates. Keep in mind, however, you don't want to be too restrictive and intrusive if your child is playing with someone else. Social play with other children is one of your child's main ways of learning to interact with others in the world. Allow children to work things out themselves up to a certain point before you intervene. 

One aspect of facilitating play (and communication, for that matter) that can often be difficult is knowing how much to prompt, when to prompt, and when to back away and let things play out. This is something I've been trying to look at lately, and I would really appreciate hearing everyone's thoughts in the comments section. 

When a child is struggling to get their message across, should we be prompting the other child to respond, or teaching the first child how to get their message across more effectively? When we prompt the response, are we turning a peer-peer conversation into a child-teacher conversation? 

When we police a game to make sure everyone is following the rules, are we implying that is solely the teacher's responsibility to make sure everyone is playing fair? From preschool to high school, children will correct each other's behaviour naturally, as a back-and-forth routine to help each other understand the social conventions and mores. Are we taking away our children's abilities to give directions to their peers? 

These are pertinent questions I think we need to be continually asking ourselves, to ensure that we are helping our children learn skills, rather than simply directing them through their daily activities. 

Take a look at Kathy's fantastic article, and please share your thoughts in the comments section below!

References: 
Eugster, K. (n.d.) Encouraging Children to Play Imaginatively and Creatively. Retrieved August 10, 2015, from http://www.kathyeugster.com/articles/article007.htm

What's Your Favourite Toy?

I was up at my cottage over the long weekend, and I found an old computer (circa 1977) in our old bedroom. Even if we had been able to power it up, I don't think there's a single thing it could have done without overloading and sputtering to a slow and embarrassing death. I thought, "Wow - I can't believe that piece of junk is still here!" And then a moment later, I remembered why we'd kept it all these years. 

When my cousins and I were kids, we would sit around that computer for hours - without even turning it on - playing GhostWriter, pretending we were in mission control for a NASA space launch, imagining we were breaking into top secret networks. That old useless computer was a launching board for our epic imaginative adventures! It didn't matter that it was objectively a piece of techno-junk; for us, that computer was a window to countless other realities. 

As adults, we often tend to look at objects as they are. In our business, this can be especially true.
"This is a spoon. What do you do with a spoon? You eat with it! A spoon is a kind of... cutlery!" 

But a spoon can be so much more! A spoon could be a ninja turtle's snowboard, racing down the hill away from approaching bad guys! A spoon could be a fun musical instrument! A spoon could be a new friend to play with! A spoon could be a magic wand, or a conductor's baton!

Teaching our kids that an object can represent many things is the basis for symbolic play. At around 18 months, TD kids will start to pretend using things in their environment for lots of different purposes. One of the milestones on the VB-MAPP is "plays with everyday objects in creative ways"! Yet, when this target shows up on our data sheets - we seem to find it immensely hard to get our kids to do it! 

We need to lay the groundwork for this step by stretching our kids concepts of what is acceptable, appropriate and fun in their day-to-day play! At first, our kids might think we're just being silly, but for those who are ready for it - a little persistence and energy can go a long way in getting them excited about it and thinking creatively. 

What were your favourite toys as a child? Did they have a million moving parts, or cool sounds, or incredible features? Or were they a canvas for you to paint your imaginative landscapes? When we look at the objects around us with our childhood eyes, we invite our kids to join us in a world of endless possibility. Let's try to bring this imaginative awareness to our play this week, and see if we can bring our kids imaginations online!

Please leave a comment telling us what your favourite toys were as a child, and/or what toys you love to bring into your play with your students! As per our guidelines, please refrain from using any child's name (or even initials) in your post, and endeavour to use general language that could be applicable in a broad sense, rather than making specific references. Thanks!