Imaginary Play

One of the most exciting developments lately is Eli's foray into imaginary play. Just recently, his imagination seems to have exploded, which makes play so much more fun. Last week, we were playing with his cash register quite a bit. We played Library. One of us would be the librarian, and the other person would be the patron. The librarian would check out books to the patron. Then, the patron would read the books. When Eli was the patron, he would look at every page. He used to sing while pointing to the words in books. Now, he's memorized many of them. If he doesn't know the books, he runs his finger under the words, all the words, and looks at the pictures. Once we were done with the books, the patron would return the books. The librarian would check if the books were overdue, and charge a fine. Library was a hit.

Then, this week I've noticed that he narrates while he's playing with his toys. Now, there's always a back story. It's so fun to listen to. Here he is playing in his sand box with his Bob the Builder toys. In this picture, he was telling Muck what a good job he was doing digging.


Yesterday, he asked me to get his fire house down from his shelf. He's played with it before. But, yesterday, he was doing more than moving the fire truck in and out of the fire house. He had an entire game that he'd worked out. His fire fighters were driving around the living room doing their jobs. I think they had about twelve jobs yesterday. Someone would call and report a fire, the fire fighters would go to whatever piece of furniture was on fire. They'd climb up their ladder and use their hoses to put the fire out, then go on to the next job. He narrated the entire game.