Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion imagination and pretend

I was thinking about my daughter's (almost 2) imagination today and just enjoying how innocent and sweet she is! She loves to pretent to cook foods and then eat them, she plays really well with her doll house etc...but the thing I find the cutest is that she will pretend (and she tells me "mommy let's pretend") to take items out of books (or off the tv), like a balloon. She will pull it out off the book and pretend to hold it and then let is go.."bye bye balloon" and watch it float away in the sky. Today we were waiting for Daddy to come out of the school after work and she told me she would pretend to pull him out of the school. From the backseat of the car she imagined that she was pulling him out of the front door of the school and then she put him on her legs and played with him while she was waiting for him to really come out! hahaha so cute!

What about your kids...share your pretending and imagination stories!

I have older kids (7, 10, 12, & 14) and all boys. A lot of their pretend play involve warriors and fighting, super-powers and scenarios they'd create with various rules. The younger 3 (yes, even the 12 yr old) still engage in this kind of play.

When DS7 was little he wouldn't eat..... well he would eat a very limited group of foods. so one day i took a pipe cleaner and put it around my finger twisted and bend it to look like a raindeer. I made the raindeer talk, he told DS7 why it was important to eat, to try new foods.

DS7 loved it..... we had that pipe cleaner at the table for years (I could bear to toss it and put it into one of his baby boxes)

Another funny thing, DS7 got a happy meal toy one time, a little Lilo doll (Lilo and stitch) She because his consist companion. I have a photo on the side of my bed of the little dolls feet sticking out of his pocket.

DS8 is pretty much all over the house with his pretend play. Last week he built a city in his room complete with a whale in a bowl of water for the sea world and he propped up some books for background scenes. he spends about half his time at home in costumes he makes using hats, swords, a blanket for a cape, etc. he also cleaned out the back shed to make a council room and set up a table and chairs for meetings for his group...we came home one night and he said he had a meeting to go to that he could not miss, they had to meet their newest member (the girl next door). They is actually him and his stuffed puma. he has adopted a sort of calvin & hobbes imaginary relationship and gives the animal hobbes-like characteristics. he loves C&h.

DD2.5 is often asking for the things she sees in books, but actually picking at them like she can get them out of the book - I like the idea of pretending with her that she can get the ball or balloon or whatever and play with it for a bit. We will have to try that!
She is often playing at switching identities - she will say she is the boy across the street, or use the name of another person and say I am so-and-so. She says your are this person and I am that person and then she laughs because she knows she has set up a funny scene!
She also enjoys pretending she can read, picking up one of my books and reading aloud phrases from one of her books. Or she will just interpret the pictures and read that way from one of her books. I think that is pretty common pre-reading.

Yesterday after reading a bit about kinestetic learners, we had a fun game of using DS spelling list and acting out the words - simple charades. DS loved this - he does a great job and dd had a really fun time imitating all of his charade moves. It was a blast.

Your story reminded me of how we got DS7 to eat asparagus when he was 2, Ienjoysoup: DH would stand the stalk upright and act like the asparagus was alive and speaking. It would very eloquently express fear of being eaten "by some kid." LOL! Then it would try to hide...and fail. DS would talk to "him," creating the funniest conversations. But in the end, DS took great pleasure in chomping the poor thing's head off. He'd laugh hysterically and ask for more asparagus.

Ah, the brutality of youth!

Oh and Chris, how did the charades go? Did that seem to help with the spelling words?

Great idea there!

My 3 spend most of their day wrapped up in some sort of imaginative play, I absolutely love watching them and they can keep themselves busy for hours at a time. DS6 and DS4 will create these hugely elaborate cities with train tracks and roads running all around their rooms, Lego buildings, lincoln log houses, k'nex amusement park rides. The Little People populate the town and are involved in all sorts of drama, danger and intrigue, lol. DD2 has always been imaginative, but mostly it's been imitative, using her hand as a phone to talk on or brushing her hair with the remote. Yesterday she started "reading" Curious George and telling me what the story was about, it was hilarious! "Oh, Mommy, Curie George felled off the wheels. He crashed. See the rock? You ok, Curie George? Good, Curie George get up. Now the duckies in the water. Watch out little duckie, Curie George's paper in water!" and on and on. She couldn't remember the word for bike, so she said he was "driving the wheels". She makes sock puppets with her socks and they talk to us in this growly, Kermit the Frog voice.

Kriston - yes I think the charades did help.. At least when I myself tried to recall the words today without the sheet in front of me, I could sort of walk through the various things we had been doing and recall quite a bit of the list. I even saw a little picture of the page with the word in question, but that is pretty normal for me.
Ds usually has the words pretty much in the bag anyway; sometimes one or two take a session of practice. Today however he definitely rattled off even the hardest without hesitation ("frequent"). Maybe he knew that one already...

The teacher counts whether he practices 3x's a week as part of his grade, so if he's got to do it, it's nice to have a very fun option.
She has pushed the level of words up a bit, but still he knows 13/15, if not all of them, when he first gets the list. There is room to practice without boredom, but not too much. On the bright side, I think if I went back to her for further adjustments she would probably be ok with that; I am just seeing how things go since she just bumped him a couple of weeks back.

Ds does just sort of run around a room when left to his own devices a lot of the time. I asked him if he likes to do this when he is getting directions on a project or being read to. he said yes, but then also admitted that it sometimes leads to him getting distracted by other stuff. he said they dont really let him do this in school, which I figured would be the case. Just another bit of the puzzle, not even sure where/how well this one fits.

Sometimes kinesthetic learners can do smaller movements and still reap the benefits, like wigging a finger under the table or tapping a toe inside a shoe. It might be worth suggesting if it would help him...

DD loves pretend play and dressing up...

At two she would do 'double' pretend, that is, she would pretend being a chicken (from Chicken run) who was pretending to be Tarzan, or Marie (from the AristoCats) pretending to be Pluto....

She would take as well imaginary flowers or presents for me, or put imaginary CDs in one machine DH had that resembled a CD lector (sp?).

Now she plays with little figures or Little Ponys and it takes her more than half an hour to just make the set up. And then DS2 takes care of it in just a few seconds....

She likes as well to be told very complex and long stories where she, her friends, Harry Potter, Winx, Simba and Nala and Superman and who knows what else are mixed together.

I think she will enjoy the role games, I wonder if the kids version of Dragons and Dungeons would be a nice present for next Christmas. What do you think?

In general, her pretend play has always been a thousand times more elaborated and complex than that of most kids I have seen in real life, but when she plays with ND friends she reduces the complexity and adapts to the other child and the mom of her friend thinks I am exaggerating ....