Building Self-Confidence Through Pretend Play

Happy ONE YEAR blog anniversary to Sugar Aunts! Thanks for joining us in our first year of blogging.  What a crazy, fun year this has been full of blogging ups and downs!  We’ve learned so much in this year about blogging and have big plans for our next year!  We wanted to put together a list of our favorite posts for you all about Imagination and Pretend Play…geared toward boosting kids’ Self-Confidence. 



And on to our Pretend Play Round-Up!
We’ve been doing a lot of pretend play this year:

Building Self-Confidence in Children Through Pretend Play

Teaching Body Parts to Toddlers We had so much fun with our little Boo-Boo Baby 🙂 The kids played doctor while working on their fine motor skills to apply the band-aides.  The littler kids were able to practice their language and awareness of body parts.  Taking care of this little sick one can remind the bigger kids of how it feels to go to the doctor and allow them to express their feelings and concerns.

Imagination Play With Play Dough  We used play dough in this small world to work on fine motor strength and dexterity.  Developing hand strength in a fun way allows a child to pick up and use utensils like pencils, scissors, and even clothing fasteners with more confidence.  This fun pretend play activity allowed us to practice language development and expose Little Guy to new words like magma, lava, molten hot, and more.  The possibilities for new vocabulary are endless with pretend play!

We have pretended a lot with play dough: Play Dough Small World Farm, Play Dough Cupcakes, Beach Play Dough, & Scented Snow Man Play Dough

Outdoor Invitation to Play Snow Restaurant  Big Sister had fun pretending to be a chef in our outdoor snow restaurant. An unstructured invitation allows kids to develop confidence in their ability to create, pretend, and express themselves.  They can explore environments and situations with the ability to develop their imagination. 
Swamp Explorers Dramatic Pretend Play  We pretended to be Swamp Explorers and searched for lizards, snakes, and insects in a swamp sensory bin and in our backyard.  Finding and seeking objects and the success and difficulty with harder-to-find items builds confidence and kids’ ability to “keep trying”!  Plus, we worked on handwriting with our swamp pretend play activity.  Adding practice to a fun play activity can make handwriting practice fun!

Small World Fairy Neighborhood Introducing Pretend Play with your children their own backyard allows them to see things in a new light.  You can use an area typically used for something else (“The sandbox is where I build sandcastles”) and gives it a new twist! Now the child can use their imagination in a new light, allowing them to develop their ability to think creatively with the things around them.

Pizza Shop Pretend Play  This was such a fun pretend play week/month for us 🙂  Creating out Pizza Shop was a group effort between re-doing our outdoor play structure with the kids, and pretending to order pizzas, and playing Pizza Shop owners!  Pretending to make (fuzzy) pizzas from felt, playing with money and a play cash register involved multiple levels of pretend.  All of the kids could get involved in pretend in different aspects.

Small World Pretend: Animals at the Lake  We used and explored lots of different textures for this small world.  Baby Girl got to know some different animals while we pretended the animals were at the lake.  Big Sister and Little Guy helped Mom make colored sand to use in our small world.  Pretend Play can involve multiple steps including creating and direction following.  Kids can develop a sense that they are capable of creating and fun ideas. 

Create A Wishing Well  Kids can come up with pretty amazing ideas.  So when Big Sister said she wanted to make a wishing well…we did! She helped come up with the ideas and we tried a few ways to make it happen.  A few ideas worked and a few didn’t.  We kept trying!  Big Sister got to express her thoughts and come up with new ideas.

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11 thoughts on “Building Self-Confidence Through Pretend Play”

  1. This prize is AMAZING! I love the round-up too! My 11 month old loves to pretend to feed his stuffed animals and to pretend he is talking to his Dada on the phone! 🙂

  2. My daughter likes to pretend she is a monster or a spell-caster and bombards us daily saying, "bam, bam!" My son dresses up with his sister but he doesn't normally do sound effects.

  3. My little boy is only 8 months old but loves playing 🙂 He enjoys playing with farm animals in Shredded Wheat and dinosaurs in leaves, twigs and other garden things. He had a baby doll that he 'feeds' a bottle and 'gives a bath'. His favourite at the minute is his cars and garage. He likes to spin the wheels on the cars and to send them down the garage ramp.

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