overview of strategies for play and imagination for infants, toddlers, and preschool children based on the NC Foundations for Early Learning and Development

1. Play and Imagination
North Carolina Foundations Task Force. (2013). North Carolina
foundations for early learning and development. Raleigh: Author.

2. Developmental Indicators
• Goal APL – 3: Children engage in increasingly complex play.
• Note the skills that progress along the continuum.
• Many of the skills are associated with children developing from solitary play
to parallel play to cooperative play.
• Goal APL – 4: Children demonstrate creativity, imagination, and
inventiveness.
• Again, the skills progress along a continuum in which children begin to play
with familiar objects to the more complicated skills associated with symbolic
play and use of imagination.

3. Environment
• Teachers can encourage creativity and imaginative play
• Provide space, props, and opportunities for pretend play
• Allow the children to play with the items and props as they choose; they will
think of ways to use things that are different from what you think.
• Model creative thinking
• Support children as they extend their play, but avoid controlling the
experience
• Help children (as needed) develop necessary social skills for successfully
engaging with their peers.

4. Strategies for Infants and Toddlers
• Allow the children to get messy! Be prepared to communicate well
with parents
• Encourage trial and error with a variety of materials and objects.
Note children’s interests.
• Use communication to reflect on play
• Incorporate unusual materials
• Make up stories and enjoy word/sound play with young children
• Provide support as needed

5. Strategies for Preschoolers
• Use open ended questions and think out loud to help children think
about new ideas.
• Provide time, space, and materials for open-ended play with a variety
of approaches
• Support social skills needed to approach and engage in cooperative
play
• Allow children to integrate play across centers
• Help children make up their own stories or alternatives to familiar
stories

6. Strategies for Preschoolers (cont.)
• Help children work together to extend their ideas and play
• Provide dramatic play materials and other objects for symbolic and
role play
• Appeal to differences in children’s play and learning by planning for a
variety of learning styles and multiple intelligences
• As children’s play becomes more complex, acknowledge the
complexity and consider ways to add new to the familiar