We love dramatic play! It may be my drama in education background (I studied to be a drama teacher) or just pure luck on my part that Ethan has got such a fantastic imagination. He loves all sorts of pretend play and will happily spend a whole day playing the role of a doctor, policeman or his favourite; a firefighter!
Ethan loves to read stories about firefighters and watch shows about them, so he has a lot of material to pull from when he's playing fireman. He starts by driving his firetruck, sometimes using a toy truck or if we're outside he'll stand on top of this climbing frame with the steering wheel and make siren sounds as he pretends to whizz around to the next emergency.
He'll also set up his fire station with all of his firefighter helmets for him and Ivy to choose from. He has quite the collection of fire helmets, but his favourite is from the time that we went to the open day at the fire station. Seeing real firetrucks and meeting real firefighters was also a huge inspiration for Ethan's imaginative play.
Of course the best part for Ethan is when he puts on his firefighter outfit including his costume, helmet and the coolest part is his fire hose backpack. You fill it up with water and it shoots real water, what could be better than that? I think that it really does make him feel like a real firefighter, having that real water to spray at his imaginary fires makes the play even more fun!
Of course Ivy doesn't really get a turn with the proper fire hose, so she has to make do with a water squirter, but she really doesn't mind at all, as long as she can play in the water! She just runs around after Ethan spraying water wherever he tells her to.
Even simple garden work like watering the flowers or cleaning up the outdoor furniture becomes a whole firefighting story with Ethan spraying the hose to put out pretend fires. It makes yard work a lot more fun, but it means that I can never get the hose away from him.
We play firefighters in the house quite a bit as well, it doesn't involve real water but Ethan and Ivy still run around in their helmets saving people in emergencies. Ethan pretends that his bed is the fire station and his fire truck, they drive around and play with walkie talkies getting their emergency calls in and saving cats from trees. Ethan always initiates the play but Ivy happily goes along with it and is definitely learning lots from him, I can't wait to see what dramatic play she wants to do!
This post is part of the Dramatic Play from A-Z series hosted over on Happy Brown House. A group of bloggers from around the world have each written a fun post about dramatic play for each letter of the alphabet, ours if F for Firefighters! Have a look at the other imaginative activities for each letter.
* This post contains affiliate links.*
1 comments
So fun! Thanks for participating!
ReplyDelete