Imagination in Play

Photo by Lindsay Yost

There are so many ways to talk about how children play. I often hear the language free play or uninterrupted play and really it’s just semantics. To me they all express a moment in which children can dive deep into their imagination and live there. In this blog post I’ll describe how we can create space for this type of play, whatever you call it, and why it’s so great!

Young children are learning constantly and their primary mode of learning is through all their senses and through their  imitation. They want to taste and feel the world through their mouth. They are curious to touch different textures and need to feel warmth. They are cellularly impacted by sound.  And they do what they see others doing around them. Then, children process the world that they’re taking in through their play. Indeed, as many early childhood education models say, play is the work of the child. Re-enacting the world they are exposed to is a child’s way of digesting what they are learning about the world. There are so many elements of the world to figure out from watching their parents’ daily habits of cooking and cleaning to understanding the communication and cooperation that’s required to live out each family members role and the roles of different jobs and community members.

Children can make an easy leap into imitative play when the toys and tools they have at their level and in their size are similar to those that they see parents and caregivers using. Once they have those toys and tools, they easily dive into creating an imaginative storyline to go along with them. A bunch of bowls and pots can be transformed into hours of imaginative story making. But there’s one more ingredient in the recipe of self directed, imaginative play and that is space.

While there is endless research on the importance of interacting with young children, reading to them, helping them with puzzles and problem solving, etc., there is also ample information on the importance of undirected time. As adults with critical thinking brains who have developed reason and judgment, it is hard for us to transplant ourselves back into the freedom in the brain of a young child. Even with the best of intentions, our ideas of how to be playful and imaginative are influenced by our knowledge of the laws of gravity and the social constructs that we’ve learned. And so sometimes, it’s best for us to just get out of the way.

Free, undirected, imaginative play occurs most naturally for children when caregivers are busy with other chores and tasks in the house or the yard and children are free to take the tools they’ve seen being used skillfully, and make up their own application for how to use them and under what storyline.

Just a bucket and a puddle of mud can become an elaborate dinner feast for a family of deer where there is a young fawn and doe and all sorts of other important characters that we may not even learn about.

In this scenario, the game is entirely the child’s creation and the educational nuances that are being processed are rich and complex. The child is understanding family roles, caregiving and caring for others, recognizing other neighbors and inhabitants of the natural world, re-playing behaviors and conversations they’ve observed, and developing cooperation skills.

As the caregiver our role is just to be nearby. When the child comes to us to say, “look what I made!” we can be interested, of course, and we could ask what else is being made or who else is coming to eat in order to encourage the child back into their game and their role and signal our support for the important work that they are also doing.