Creative Play

Posted by kara

Toshi is really into pretend play. Her favorite is playing trains, where they go on many adventures… usually hiding from a ghost or sandstorm. She is always James (the red one) and usually doles out Gordon or Percy for the other person to play.

She is getting more into stories. She likes to recite a series of events. For example, she will talk about this Thomas episode where “Gordon goes really fast. He goes over a bridge. The wind blows off his dome. He had to get a new one!” Or she’ll retell what happens in a storybook. But the best thing is when she makes up her own stories! They sometimes make sense. She is a bit fascinated/scared by monsters right now, so most of her stories talk about how there are MONSTERS (use scary voice) that say “ROAR!” and then the people go inside and someone inside (usually Katie or Kristen) say, “No monsters.” The end.

Oh, and if you are really lucky, she’ll make up her own song and dance. She’ll sing her nonsense words in her robust voice and hop around. It’s really cute because we cheer her on and she looks so proud!

Toshi loves her pretend food and makes us (and her trains) lots of snacks. The egg and lemon (which sounds like ‘watermelon’ when she says it) are also used as characters and sometimes accompany us to the store. Anyway, one time I gave her our big yellow mixing bowl and she seemed so tickled that I gave her a real bowl to make her “salad” in. The only thing I didn’t really think through was that now she just grabs the bowls at her own whim. This means a lot more dishwashing than I’d like.

Okay, one last thing. Toshi loves her painting smock. A couple of times I gave her one of my t-shirts and she thought it was so funny to wear it that she wouldn’t take it off. So she’ll fingerpaint for a little bit and then hop down (wash hands) and then play other things, still wearing my t-shirt. They fit her perfectly. I like putting her in the one below because it’s the t-shirt I got from doing the Big [Stair] Climb which is something I participated in right as I got sick from being pregnant with Toshi.