Village/Feathers/Week 5

Dear Village Parent:

Playing with paper? Seems like a simple, silly idea, but actually, playing with everyday household items can be as enriching as (or even more so than) playing with complicated manufactured toys.

Using a substitute to “stand for” a specific object is part of the symbolic play process. This process is the understanding that one thing can represent another—such as a toy car representing a real car, or in more complex terms, an architectural model representing a full-scale building.

The first stages of symbolic play often manifest themselves in children as young as six to eight months old. The play typically then becomes more sophisticated as the child grows. It begins with understanding that one object stands for another object with which they are familiar. The child will then begin to play in a more abstract manner, for example, pretending a tower of blocks is a house.

Symbolic play is a basic building block of language acquisition. The concept of one thing representing another correlates to language in that a word represents an object.

How can you and your child engage in symbolic play at home?

Lynda

P.S. It is time to think about re-enrolling for Kindermusik next semester! Re-enrollment materials will be available to you in the coming weeks. Next theme we will be exploring in Kindermusik Village is Cock-A-Doodle Doo and Dew Drops.