Hi, my name is Christina Feuge and I am the Speech Clinical Director at Achieve Beyond. Today, I’m going to share with you some ways to expand your child’s pretend play skills. All you will need is your child’s favorite doll, stuffed animal or action figure, and some accessories to help expand play. You can use a small blanket or towel, a bowl, cup, and a spoon. Show your child an action, such as sleep with the doll by laying the doll on the floor and covering the doll with a blanket. Other action words you can teach your child during this activity are eat, drink, cry, kiss and hug.
Encourage your child to follow the direction by telling them, give the doll a hug. By doing this, you will learn a lot about what your child understands. If they are not able to follow your direction, you can show them by modeling it first. I am giving the doll a hug. Now, let’s pretend to feed the doll using the bowl, cup and the spoon. You can model specific sounds, mm or yum, and simple words such as eat, more, juice or drink. Encourage your child to repeat the words while playing. Remember, it’s important to show your child the action while you say the word.
For example, while you give the doll a sip of juice from the cup, say, drink. Drink. By using pretend play skills, you will help your child learn a great amount of verbs and action words to use to communicate. And remember, children learn best through playing.
