World of Pretend

I recently listened to a short clip on NPR (recommended by a friend) on Old-Fashioned Play Builds Serious Skills. They say:

Elaborate toys, busy schedules and the demise of recess have left children with fewer opportunities for imaginative play — and it shows. Researchers say changing the way children play has changed their emotional and cognitive development.

Very interesting stuff. Anyway I love the imagination Caedmon has. I hope we can always find the time and energy to nurture that in him. I know there are days when we let him watch t.v. way too much and days that we are 'too busy' to play with him, but all in all if his imagination and pretend play continues to grow like it has in the last 6 months especially - we are looking at a very creative kid!

Inspired by the program I took Caed out yesterday to the courtyard of where we are staying and played 'adventure' with him for 1 hour. He had no toys (props) during this whole thing. Though we turned many things (christmas tree, caution floor is wet signs, coins) into props for our story. Here is some of what we together came up with:

* Monsters that you need passwords to get by (like Caed's favorite password leggily leggily) which he always whispered very quietly - not sure where he got that from

* Reindeers that live in a tree names Bluie and Greenie, who only come down when you have a special key, or are invited to a 'happy monster party'

* Rocket-ships that take off by us twisting our fingers in different ways.

             - They go to lands where there are spiders you have to smush with your foot while making a 'smush' sound. 

             -  They also go to lands where the ground is covered in snakes and you have to say 'beep beep beep' to make them fall asleep then take BIG steps to get over them.

             -  And lastly to lands where everything is made of lollypops and there are lizards there eating them that you have to sing this song to in order to stop them from eating lollypops "Fluffy cats and candy canes, think of sunshine when it rains, soothing thoughts will ease your pain, fluffy cats and candy canes" (he didn't make that up it is from a show.

* A happy monster party. They ate flowers and danced. 

* A secret treasure that was guarded by a dead snake

* A dragon that had to be fed a cookie to go to sleep and then his head was changed to make him nice. 

And this game went on for a long time. All over the courtyard. It was all connected in one story believe it or not. And we would revisit areas and characters. When Sean got home he was bombarded with Caed telling him all about our exploits. In fact Caed was still telling Sean 'how to make the rocket-ship go' this morning. 

I love my boy! I sure do hope he has some little brothers or sisters in the near future so he can teach them all about how to do 'adventures'!