How often have you caught your little toddler hold up a block of wood or a rock or a crumpled piece of paper and pretend that it was a spaceship or a flying horse or a zooming airplane? A zillion times might not be an exaggerated response, I believe.
Pretend Play is such an important part of growing up. In the formative years of their life, children have the power to visualize and imagine things that often beat our realistic, rational thought processes. As adults, we kill our imagination to live up to the practical demands of the trite world that we have built around ourselves. But childhood is different. We have the license to dream and cook up our own stories and build our own imaginary, whimsical worlds. That is a license that every child has and fully deserves.
When a child dreams that he has flown into his imaginary world to meet with his favorite imaginary characters, it is a dream that encourages role-play and thus his emotional development. When a child puts together a few blocks and builds a rocket ship and enacts its take off, its an activity that encourages his creative thinking skills and his language skills. When a child pretends to be an animal rescuer and runs about trying to fix problems that different animals from his toy box are facing, it encourages the development of his analytical and problem solving skills. Thus, pretend play is central to a child's over all development.
At PicUrTale, this has been our observation from dealing with children in this age group. Hence, we have decided to focus on enabling this wonderful activity by providing a means for the children to really be a part of their imaginary worlds.
Ishaan and Tricy's Zoo Trip was a story that developed in the course of one such pretend play session. A little boy named Ishaan, picked out a few toys from his toy box - A dinosaur, A little boy and a zooming car and said "Mommy, my dino wants to go to the Zoo". Why not???
That's how that story was born.
Ishaan and Tricy's Zoo Trip teaches via pretend-play the differences between the prehistoric dinosaur world and our current world. Children learn about different wild animals and experience the thrill of visiting them in the zoo. They even learn about the cries of the various animals.
We encourage you to preview this book in our book shelf.
It's a wonderful read ... Participate with your child in imagining himself in the zoo with a dinosaur. Act silly and imitate the animal sounds. At the end of the story, we promise you will learn a thing or two along with your child.
Happy Reading!! Happy Pretend Playing!!
