Recently C’s ability to participate in imaginative play has increased dramatically. M is still the director of their play but I’m fascinated by the growing complexity of their games.
We spent part of the week after Easter with my parents, and we brought back my old play kitchen and lots of great vintage metal dishes and pots. The girls have developed lots of kitchen-centered games, but their favorite right now involves the Rody horse that C got for her birthday. They pretend it is their donkey and it is near-death from a illness which can be cured by giving it lots of food. They put a small bib around her ears (I’m assuming that’s because it won’t fit around Rody’s neck) and present her with dish after dish full of food.
Another game they’ve played a lot recently is princess and servant. They take turns being the princess and the other is the servant who brings her food, clothing, etc. M has learned that she actually prefers to be the servant because she gets to choose what food to bring and how to dress C up. And she gets to tell C that it’s time to take a nap or have her lessons, etc, more like a governess than a maid.
M loves the Rainbow Fairies books by Daisy Meadows, not fine literature by any stretch but I see their appeal to a five year old girl. We’ve recently been reading through the Pet Fairies series and M has taken to pretending to be Georgia the Guinea Pig fairy, carrying around her stuffed guinea pig and a blue straw that looks like the wand Georgia is holding on the front of the book.
Another thing M has done a lot of lately (completely unprompted by me) is copy from books, particularly her field guides and her Pony-Crazed Princess books. She folds construction paper and then copies from a book into it, making her own book. She’s also made a few laptops by folding construction paper and copying the letters and numbers of a keyboard on the inside and drawing a screen. She adds extra buttons with magic functions like the animal rescue button or the summon-a-fairy button. She likes to type passages from books into her paper laptop.
