Why Pretend Play makes children into better readers.
Want your child to grow into a literary genius?
Encourage a daily dose of imaginative play.
Is it not that as parents when we see our children reading books we feel great, we feel that our children are getting loads of knowledge and improving their language skills, but do we feel the same when they are playing with a toy and making it a make believe object of play.
Thinking beyond the dimensions of our “realistic’’ world comes very naturally to little children. They are in a world that is full of dreams and wonders and therefore you will be pleased to know that you are actually raising a little literary genius through the power of imaginative play. When children are exposed to the world of imaginative stories of humans and animals that are beyond the possibility of a ‘realistic’ world, the child feels as if it is an extension of their own thoughts and feelings. The child can relate to these stories from their own imaginative play experience.
We know it from our parenting experience that any new object that the child comes across in the house becomes an object of play for him. The object can turn into a fantasy toy within seconds, thats why it is no surprise that with such strong imagination a child can keep himself busy with the simplest of toys while weaving his own imaginative story around it.
So how does pretend play make children into better readers?
When the child turns a shoe box into a home for the tiny figurines or when a old cloth becomes a rag doll, the child’s bubbling imagination disregards the object’s intended purpose and turns the object into a thing that suits the imaginative story in his mind. The child is doing the exact same thing that he would when he is reading a book, that is entering a world of imagination but rather here the imaginative thoughts are not in print but in his minds eye and this is helping him build an empire of solid imagination that is giving him the foundation for a life full of thoughtfulness.
In imaginative play the child is holding two perspectives in the mind, one is looking at the object itself for being what it is and the other is the make believe part of that object. This is quite similar to reading a story, there is an impression that a child has about certain objects around him in the world eg – a cupcake that is a yummy piece of treat but when he reads in Alice in Wonderland that a cupcake could make Alice bigger / smaller in size he is delved into a set of imagination so now he had two perspectives of the cupcake, one is for what it actually is and the other for what it could become and this is where the child feels that stories like these are actually an extension of his own thoughts and feelings.
A daily dose of uninterrupted imaginative play is as important for growing a literary genius as much as his exposure to books. When he reads or even looks at pictures in a book he is in the process of exchanging thoughts from the book and thoughts of his own imagination. These are helping to build the foundation of his personality which will last him with a lifetime supply of dreams and ideas.
