Engage Your Child in a World of Creative Imagination
When we were children, we pretended we were superheroes—we stopped time or flew or defeated villains with laser power. Or we pretended to live in a castle with kings and queens and ate in the royal dining table. Or we played house with our siblings setting real-life family situations.
Kids today are not any different. When you look deep into their eyes, it would be like peering into a world of fantasy and imagination. The only difference is today, there are more toys created to harness children’s imagination and foster creativity which are crucial in the development of a child.
Encouraging your kid towards creative imagination can start as early as the infancy to toddler years. Of course, it would not be wise to give your 3-month-old tyke a dinner play set with lots of miniature food for this is obviously unsafe and poses choking hazard. Fortunately, imagination fostering infant toys are now made available for babies and toddlers.
And not only do imaginative toys nurture creativity, it is also instrumental in the development of other skills such as social interaction, language, communication, and problem-solving.
One good example of a toy that cultivates a toddler’s active imagination are pretend toys that are modelled after real things such as the Fisher Price Laugh & Learn Learning Phone which is toy version of a real telephone. This encourages your baby to imitate you when he sees you talking to someone over the phone thus promoting language development and social interaction skills. At first, you’ll find your baby enjoying babbling on his toy phone with gibberish syllables but what you may not be aware of is this activity is surely developing your baby as a social communicator.
Aside from these, there are now a lot of pretend costumes in the market that are made not just for Halloween or costume parties but for everyday games and activities. Let your baby be a superhero or a princess for a day while you tell tem fairytale stories. Baby toys with safe unbreakable mirror are also useful in allowing a baby to explore and discover himself while actively interacting with the baby on the mirror. Other toys such as pretend kitchen, dinner sets, dollhouses and similar toys are made to hone the imagination of older kids.
An important thing to note though is that it is not enough to leave your babies and children to play with their toys on their own and expect them to be actively imaginative the next day. The key is parent participation in babies’ activities and games. Not only would this be a fun bonding time for both of you, it would also be a great learning experience for them.
Do pretend plays with your kid. More especially if he does not have siblings to play with. Let him be the doctor and you’re the patient. Or let him be a teacher and you’re the student. You can do cooking games with her or have tea parties with her dolls.
And while you’re doing so, try incorporating moral values during your play time. Ask your son to be a respectful doctor to his patient or your daughter to say “please” and “thank you” to her doll friends. Whatever it is, this kind of interaction teaches social skills very efficiently.
To give you an idea of just some of the best kinds of toys for your baby, you would want to buy the Baby Einstein Baby Monet Crib Toy, Baby Einstein Press and Play Pals, Caterpillar Cooling Teether, Caterpillar Ring Rattle Color Kaleidoscope, Discover & Play Activity Center , Discover & Play Teether Book, Fisher Price Laugh & Learn Learning Phone,
. All of these are exciting toys made to be of the highest durability and safety, to cultivate creativity and imagination and to stimulate babies’ skills and senses.
