2. What is imaginative play?
Imaginative play is essentially when children are role playing and
are acting out various experiences they may have had or
something that is of some interest to them. They are
experimenting with decision making on how to behave and are
also practising their social skills. Children learn from
experience: from what happens around them, from what they
see, hear, smell, taste and touch. To absorb those experiences
and make sense of the world, they need to be engaged in
imaginary play.
We as adults can often under value imaginative play. Play is a
child’s way of engaging and making sense of the world. Role play
may appear to be a very simple activity, yet within it, young
children learn practical life skills such as dressing themselves,
how to cooperate and share with others.
3. What are the benefits?
It supports;
• Emotional Development
• Social Development
• Language Development
• Cognitive Development
• Physical Development
4. How might you see imaginative
play in placement?
• Children use play props ( pretend a box is something)
• Role play and pretend they are someone else.
• They pretend play together co-operatively.
• Pretend play everyday situations.
• Pretend fantasy play.
• Use imaginative play to act out a situation.
5. Our role
Children play imaginatively and creatively without help from
adults. However, with thoughtful planning, adults can
provide resources and an environment that give
opportunities for children to develop their own ideas as well
as helping them to explore feelings safely. There is no right
or wrong way to play in imaginative and creative play.
6. Suitable resources
Resources for children’s role play activities include:
boxes of different sizes and shapes
conkers, fir cones, feathers and acorns
play-dough or plasticine
dressing-up items, including hats, capes and bags,
writing pads, pencils and magazines.
7. Children choose their own activities.
It is important that:
resources are visible and accessible, which helps to
develop children’s independence
the layout of the play environment is planned to
allow for children to move freely from one activity
to another and to develop play ideas
open-ended resources are provided, which can be
used in several ways, rather than pre-structured
toys, which may only be used in one way.
Free Flow Play
