Pretend games to play

25 Pretend Play Ideas - Bright Star Kids

Do you have kids that love to pretend play? Pretend playing is good for their imagination, and develops vital social, language, thinking and emotional skills.

Here are some great pretend play ideas for you to try.

Why not turn some old cardboard boxes into a cubby house, decked with windows & a postbox like this one!

If your child loves making stories up, why not paint some pictures on stones & see what great stories they can come up with!

So easy to recreate with removable tape, create a town complete with buildings and roads where your child can drive their cars around on. 

Create a town complete with buildings for your superheros & villains to live and fight their battles.

Little girls love to pretend they are fairies! Make a set of wings out of cardboard & let her paint, glue, stick or colour in her wings.

Using a crate or box, fill them with mailing tubes to make a pet hotel where your child’s stuffed toys can live. Your child can be the hotel manager!

For the little one that loves to play shops, create any type of shop with cube shelves and props.

It’s amazing what you can transform out of a cardboard box like this kitchen stove! You can even build a whole kitchen complete with fridge, microwave, sink & shelves from cardboard boxes!

Argh me hearties! It’d be time for some pirating fun!

Using an old shoe box, this school for lego figurines looks easy to whip up.

This construction scene looks like it will offer loads of fun for the budding builders!

If you have a child that loves writing letters and sorting, a family post office station might be the perfect play station.

Pretend playing isn’t only fun, it can teach little ones motor and letter recognition skills. Create an alphabet fishing game with a laundry basket, paper clip fishes & fishing rod with magnet.

Miniature worlds are so much fun! There are so many scenes you can create, like this dinosaur one. Hours of fun for little ones.

Kids love to re-enact adult life, even simple things like going to the ATM.

Make this cash register for your imaginary shop and let your kids learn all about numbers and quantities.

If you have a budding chef, let them (pretend to) cook dinner for their little friends.

Make this easy cardboard bed so that your child can put their doll or stuff toys to sleep. Great to nurture big brother or sister skills before the new arrival!

Do you have a child that loves Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? This easy dress up might be what they need to fight their future battles.

Is it every child’s dream to star in their own TV show or was it just mine?

Scenes can be so easily recreated with paint and old cardboard boxes like this My Little Pony rainbow scene.

Using an old cereal box, turn it into a doctors kit. Your child will love pretending to be a doctor.

What a cute idea to turn some figurines into mermaids with playdoh mermaid tails decorated with stones & gems.

Using old drink bottles to make a jetpack, your little one will fly from one adventure to the next.

Have hours of fun with these super hero cuffs made from toilet rolls.

Looking for some fun indoor activities to do with your little ones? We love these Weaving Art Ideas for a rainy day activity!

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17 Fun Pretend Play Games and Activities for Toddlers

Have you gotten to the pretending stage of toddlerhood yet? I had forgotten how much fun pretend games can be until Toot started to show interest in pretending.

I think as an adult you forget HOW to pretend because you spend so much of your day doing real things. We don’t have time for pretending except for maybe reading a book.

So what kind of pretending games can you play with your toddler? Here are 17 ideas to get you started!

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Toddlers will start pretending as early as 18 months. (Sometimes as early as 12 months!)

They start by copying simple things like talking on the phone. Toot started talking on the phone and we had no idea where she got it from because we rarely ever CALL anyone with our phones. lol.

By two years old, they are ready for full pretending games.

You should be aware that toddlers can’t yet pretend things out of thin air like older kids can.

Toddlers need a placeholder object. They can’t just hold their hand up to their ear and pretend they have a phone. They need something tangible. It doesn’t even have to really look like the object.

Toot made some calls on an Eggo waffle once. But it does help if it resembles the object at least a little.

Delivering mail is a lot of fun if you’re a toddler.

Set up little “mailboxes” around your house for stuffed animals or for family members. You can make a mailbox out of a shoe box or any of the leftover Amazon boxes you have lying around your house. lol

Use junk mail or have your toddler “write” letters. Tell your little one who to deliver them to or just let them choose.

If you want a cute mailbox toy with wooden letters and stamps, we have this Melissa and Doug mailbox set and it is fantastic.

You have to put the right letters in the right size slots and have the stamp velcroed on at the right place for it to go in. So it helps with shape matching and problem solving skills.

See Mailbox on Amazon

2. Pretend Kitchen and baking

Y’all, my kid is obsessed with her kitchen. She now has one upstairs and one downstairs.

She loves to put food in the microwave. Sometimes she puts her bears in there too which worries me.

But She loves to play with her pretend food and make lunch for her stuffed animals.

If you don’t have the money for a play kitchen, you can always DIY one out of an old entertainment center or a cabinet or bookcase.

We also love this Melissa and Doug cookie baking set.

Get Pretend Food

My nephews used to love pretending to be dinosaurs. They would stomp around and roar.

Your toddler can pretend to be any animal. Hop around like frogs or kangaroos.

It’s a great game to learn about animals and animal noises.

Try all kinds of animals: pets, barnyard animals, jungle animals, and sea creatures. Even mythical animals like unicorns, dragons, or monsters are fun to pretend to be.

Bonus: it doesn’t require any materials.

Toot has discovered pirates. Eye patches and buried treasure are fun to play with.

You can get a whole pirate costume if you’d like.

Or just keep it simple and make your own eye patch with construction paper and a ribbon or string.

Looking for buried treasure throughout the house or backyard is similar to Easter egg hunts. You can even use Easter eggs to hide coins!

Draw a quick map and mark it with an X. You can hide a treasure chest like this or make one out of a shoe box.

Plastic doubloons are fun to find. I used to love them when I was a kid. Or hide your own kind of treasure like candy or stickers.

Here’s a Fun Pirate Scavenger Hunt

Who hasn’t had a tea party? (Toot. She has coffee parties. lol)

Invite all of your stuffed animals or dolls to sit and drink tea and eat cakes. Your toddler can learn to serve guests and learn pouring skills if you use actual water to pretend.

We have this learning tea pot that sings songs and makes pouring noises. It has three levels. Level 3 is playing pretend. She’s had it since she was probably 9 months old.

Yes, boys can have tea/coffee parties too. They aren’t just for girls.

Even if you don’t set up a real lemon stand, you can have pretend customers (stuffed animals.)

Toddlers might be a little young for actually sitting at the end of the driveway with a pitcher of lemonade, but that doesn’t mean they can’t pretend inside or in the backyard.

If you have some toddlers over for a play date, they can take turns being the customer.

If you really want to go all out, there’s a cool lemonade stand by Melissa and Doug. It doubles as a grocery store set up too.

See on Amazon

7. Ballerina or Dancer

Toot loves pretending to be a ballerina like Emma on the Wiggles.

Get a pretty tutu or make one out of tulle.

Even boys can pretend to be a ballet dancer! They don’t need a tutu. But they can still dance like ballet dancers!

If ballet isn’t your kiddo’s style, try hip hop or pop star dancing. Make a little stage and turn a lamp into a spotlight.

Get a Tutu

When I was a kid, I would pretend to be the characters in Lion King, Power Rangers, Pocahontas, basically anything I loved at the time.

My daughter loves to pretend to be Doc McStuffins and the characters from Paw Patrol and Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood. (She always wants me to be Miss Elaina for some reason.)

We have a dress-up pretend play Doc McStuffins kit that her Aunt Kelly got her for her birthday. She loves wearing the coat and using the otoscope.

But for playing Daniel Tiger and Paw Patrol, she likes to hold the stuffed animals and make them talk.

Sometimes she makes them talk to each other and sometimes she’ll ask me to be one of the pups. When you pretend play with your toddler, you help them build social skills like conversation and taking turns.

We have these Paw Patrol Pup toys. They’re the perfect size for little hands. And small Daniel Tiger toys too.

More Daniel Tiger Toys

All you need for this pretending game is books and maybe a bookshelf.

Your toddler can pretend to check books out of their library, or they can pretend to be the librarian.

Ask your toddler to find you specific books from their shelves. They can learn how to search and find what they’re looking for. (A skill they’ll forget when they’re teenagers. lol)

You can make little due date cards out of index cards or just regular paper.

This is a good way to start teaching days of the week and how a calendar works. Or you can actually buy due date cards to play with for just a couple of dollars.

Need more books? (who doesn’t lol) Here are our favorites.

An easy way to pretend grocery shop is just set out all of your plastic food on tables or on the couch and have your toddler pick out what they want and put it in a little basket.

Toot loves her shopping carts. She has one at home and at Grandma’s house. So if you can afford a grocery cart toy, go for it. It’s one of Toot’s favorites.

You can get more complex by adding in the buying part of grocery shopping with play money or a pretend register.

Or make an ingredient list for your toddler. Tell them to get specific items to make a recipe.

See More Grocery Toys

I have no idea why someone would thinking cleaning or sweeping would be fun. But apparently toddlers love it.

They like pretending to be adults. What do adults do? We clean things for 60 years and then we die. (Don’t you feel like you’re always cleaning? UGH. I’m always cleaning.)

We have this cleaning set by Melissa and Doug and she likes the broom the most.

I got it for her for Christmas because she kept trying to use the real broom and was knocking stuff off the walls and off the table. It was way too big for her. So she got one her own size.

Bonus: it actually does sweep so she’s actually helping!

See on Amazon

Turn anything into a microphone: a hair brush, a tube from a toilet paper roll, a water bottle. You can get those microphones that echo your voice pretty cheaply. (Remember those? I still have one from the 90’s.)

Drums can be made from literally anything. Pots are classic drums. If you have drumsticks but don’t want a loud sound, use pillows! They make a deadened sound when hit with a stick.

Remember when we were kids and we made guitars from a kleenex box and rubberbands? You can do that but be careful with rubberbands around toddlers. They might snap. (I’m terrified of actual guitar strings snapping because I’ve had it happen to me before.)

Also consider getting a toy guitar. Either one that has real strings or an electronic one that plays music.

See Guitars for Toddlers

Your little one can learn how a restaurant works by pretending to be a waiter or waitress. They can also be the chef!

Have them take orders from their friends or stuffed animals. (Preferably something that matches the plastic food you have. lol) And they can bring it to them at a table!

We have this awesome table for toddlers that is lightweight plastic and comes with 4 chairs. It’s so easy to wipe clean that she eats her meals at it. It’s also fun to use as a restaurant table.

Pretending to be mommy or daddy will probably be their first pretend play game. The first thing they notice and want to emulate is us, their parents.

That’s why baby dolls are so popular. Not just with girls, too. Boys like taking care of babies! You’ll see this especially if they have a little brother or sister.

Get a baby doll and make a crib and changing area for it. We still use her old bassinet from her Pack N Play that lifts out as a doll bed.

She loves putting the baby to sleep and “changing” her diaper.

Get a Baby Doll

Toddlers love taking photos. If you can part with your phone, (or maybe an old phone or ipod with a camera) let them take real pictures!

But if not, a toy camera works just fine. Or make one out of small box.

Tell them to take photos of nature, their favorite toys, their friends, anything they find interesting.

Get a Toy Camera

A classic pretend play game: doctor!

Get out the band-aids. Make a stethoscope out of some old headphones by just taping a cardboard circle on the plug.

Or you can buy a dress up doctor kit.

Have your toddler perform checkups on their stuffed animals or dolls or on you! They can give out band-aids and kisses on boo-boos.

Plus they can learn about body parts. Not just arms and legs but hearts and lungs too!

We have the Doc McStuffins dress up kit that came with some of her tools like her otoscope and a cast. But she doesn’t pretend to be Doc McStuffins all the time. Sometimes she’s Doctor Anna from Daniel Tiger. lol

Get a Dress Up Doctor Outfit

Her favorite pretend play game right now is Drive Thru. If you have plastic play food, all you really need is a box that you can cut a window in.

You and your toddler can take turns being the chef and the customer. When I’m the customer, I like to hold up stuffed animals like her Paw Patrol Pups to the window to order food.

We have a play kitchen that has a window already in it. That’s how she discovered she loves this game.

Let me know in the comments below!

Pretend play is important for toddlers to practice their skills, especially social skills.

But sometimes we as parents forget how to play pretend because it’s been so long since we were little.

I hope these ideas will inspire you to create your own pretending games with your little ones!

Read More about Toddlers

Game of pretend. NOTHING REGULAR

WikiReading

NOTHING REGULAR
Millman Dan

Contents

Pretending Game

Like everyone else, I also made a significant contribution to the game of pretense, the oldest game invented by mankind, during which I pretended to be happy, that I liked some things and not others, that my actions had no consequences . I imagined that my relationship with someone was fine until it fell apart with a bang; I thought I could handle something until life showed me I didn't know anything about it. I played with my imagination all my life, until Socrates forced me to free myself from most of the usual illusions.

Many criminals are engaged in the game of pretending; entangled in delusions of their mind that have nothing to do with reality, they imagine that they will achieve something if they are not caught in the process, not paying any attention to the spiritual losses and real consequences affecting their own lives and the lives of others . Some people smoke cigarettes, use drugs, drive drunk and do other deeds that are destructive to their own and other people's health, while staying in their fantasy world. Others build imaginary walls to protect themselves from childhood hurt, sexual harassment, and other painful and frightening memories and anxious expectations.

The level of intelligence does not affect the tendency to self-deception. One of my acquaintances, a very nice woman, is extremely proud of her sharpened intellect. She is an exceptionally capable mathematician, she has a very rich speech and an absolutely amazing memory. She is surprisingly reasonable, and one of her strongest qualities is a logical, analytical mindset.

This woman has been smoking for over forty years. Relatives and friends constantly convince her of the need to quit smoking; they insistently repeat the doctors' warnings to her. Like many of us, she always has some witty answer. She is able to keep the consequences out of her mind, but she cannot prevent them from manifesting in her body in any way. It makes me very sad when I see how she fights for every breath, with what intense breathing she overcomes the next rung of the stairs. At the same time, she even sobs in self-pity. She has to pay a high price for understanding the law of cause and effect.

By paying attention to the consequences of our actions, we are able to learn the lessons of life quickly, simply, and relatively easily. Even if we choose the most difficult path, life reveals itself as the most talented teacher - sooner or later, in one way or another, it will certainly teach us all the lessons of reality.

Survival Game

Survival game Big Brother is a survival game. Displacing others instead of being repressed (that is, having time to displace others before you are displaced) is the main principle of success. At the beginning of the game, all participants are equal. Whatever you did in the past has no

(5) Pretense

(5) Pretense Let's start with a discussion of the notion of pretense, partly constitutive of such notions as cheating, role playing, playing bear, feigning illness, and hypochondria. Note that there are cases of fiction in which the pretender deliberately

(6) Pretending, fantasizing and imagining

(6) Pretending, fantasizing and imagining There is not much difference between a child who plays pirate and a man who imagines he is a pirate. What is the difference here, can be seen from the words we use. Words like "play", "pretend" and "act" we

2. Game.

2. Game. - The game exists as a naive pleasure of vital force, free from any burden of reality (Spiel ist als naive Lust der Vitalit?t ohne alle Last der Wirklichkeit). As a liberation from the constraints of reality, it is the path to non-obligation. Laughter Accompanies Pleasure

(c) Great Game

(c) Great Game What happens to a civilization that has reached the "information peak", that is, it has exhausted the capacity of science as a "communication channel"? We will present three possible ways out of this situation - three because they correspond to the results of

Great Game

great game WHAT IS HAPPENING to a civilization that has reached the "information peak", that is, it has exhausted the bandwidth of science as a "communication channel"? We will present three possible ways out of this situation - three because they correspond to the results of

GAME

THE GAME GAME - a kind of physical and intellectual activity, devoid of direct practical expediency and representing the individual with the possibility of self-realization, which goes beyond the scope of his actual social roles. I. is one of the key concepts of modern

DEATH PLAY

GAME WITH DEATH We have already spoken of the Ares male boasting of their boldness and bravery. In peacetime and in a purely civilian profession, they can take conscious risks and even play with death. Here it is interesting to discern the motive and nature of such feats in Apollo

GAME

THE GAME Dionysus, the child raised by Zeus, is also the archetype of the Divine Child. Therefore, spontaneity and a tendency to play are inherent in him. In English there is a difference between the words "game" and "play". Both of them are translated into Russian as "game", but in the first word there is an element

XXXI (Mistakes of people in society. Vanity, boasting, pretense)

XXXI (Mistakes of people in society. Vanity, boasting, pretense) Bath, 19 October st. Art. 1748 My dear boy! In my last letter I wrote what kind of society you should keep, and now I want to give some rules on how to behave in it. My experience and my own

GAMBLING

GAMBLING The struggle with chance, that is, with God, is always full of mystical grandeur. Gamblers are no exception to

Imitation and pretense

Imitation and pretense The words "imitation" and "transformation" are often illegible and inaccurately used to describe the same processes. It is advisable to separate them. "imitation" and "transformation" are by no means the same thing, a careful distinction between them will help better

I. Imitation game

I. Imitation game I'm going to consider whether machines can think. But for this we must first define the meaning of the terms "machine" and "think". It would be possible to arrange these definitions in such a way that they reflect as best as possible the usual use of these words, but

I Game

I The game Once upon a time there was a very serious child, so serious that he felt deeply sorry for other children who played all day long. This little man guessed that dolls, cars, masks and other adult toys were not real and did not represent

Game (Jeu)

Game (Jeu) Activity, the purpose of which is itself or the pleasure received in its process; carried out according to its own rules and does not have irreversible consequences (what is achieved by one side may not be taken into account by the other or be challenged). Here is

The imitation game: 8 animals that pretend to be other creatures

August 15Education

Flies that look like bees, turtle worms, mimic cats and other masters of mimicry.

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1. Panda ant

The adorables in the picture above are called panda ants because of their distinctive coloration. But in fact, these insects are not bears, and not even ants - this is one of the types of Chilean wasps.

Their males have wings to fly and quickly mate with everything that lies badly. During mating games, they lift the female into the air - this is such a mating dance. Ladies are devoid of wings and crawl on the ground. After mating, they find the larvae of other insects and stick a sting-ovipositor into them.

These sadists lay their eggs directly into the bodies of their victims, so that their offspring will then devour the unfortunate from the inside.

Wasp stings, or rather, the stings of its sting are incredibly painful. And with their bright coloring, these insects warn everyone around that it is better not to mess with them.

2.

These creatures are also called hoverflies. This is a huge family of flies that are relatives of your "favorite" pesky insects. But they look much prettier than the garbage scavengers and feed mainly on pollen and nectar of flowers.

Like most ordinary flies, hoverflies are harmless and defenseless. But they found a way to be safe - they began to grow striped fur. After all, no one in their right mind would anger a bee, and even a large bumblebee, even more so: they have sharp stings and poison that causes severe pain. And a similar color protects the hoverflies from the encroachments of predators.

3. Vulture turtle

Video: Wikimedia Commons

She is also an alligator turtle. It got its name because of the extremely powerful jaws and protrusions on the shell, similar to the back of an alligator. It lives in the southeastern United States, mainly in the Mississippi basin.

This turtle trades in fishing. Instead of just lying in ambush during the hunt, she actively lures prey with her tongue. Its tip is long and narrow and resembles a pink worm. The turtle burrows into the ground at the bottom and sticks out its tongue. The fish swims closer, and the reptile easily bites it in half with its jaws.

By the way, the weight of an adult tortoise can exceed 100 kilograms, and in length it reaches 80 centimeters. And thanks to this, it can also bite off your fingers, so it's better not to put them in this monster's mouth.

4. Caterpillar Snake

There is a moth with the obscure Latin name Hemeroplanes triptolemus. In adult form, he cannot boast of an impressive appearance - an ordinary gray butterfly that looks like a hefty moth.

But in the form of a caterpillar, this insect is very memorable. The fact is that it has discovered an unusual way of protection - to pretend to be a snake. The rear of the caterpillar is very similar to the head of a viper. And if the insect feels danger, it inflates and raises it like a snake's head.

Any bird that decides to profit from a larva, after that, in a panic, changes course and flies away to hell. Because no bird in their right mind will bully vipers.

Another species of butterfly, Papilio troilus, can also disguise itself as snakes at a young age. But the caterpillar pretends to be a viper only when it grows up and turns green properly. But when the larva is young and brownish, it pretends to be bird droppings.

Naturally, birds will diligently fly around such a treat.

5. Alligator beetle

Another baby that is an insect, but does its best to mow like a reptile. This creature is called the Suriname lantern, it is also an alligator beetle. And its front part resembles the head of a lizard.

When the beetle feels danger, it inflates its head and spreads its wings, which makes it seem to the birds that in front of them is not an insect at all, but a reptile. The feathered one decides not to get involved and leaves the prey.

By the way, the name of the beetle appeared by mistake. The naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian for some reason considered that his head glows at night, and the systematizer Carl Linnaeus took this statement on faith and called the insect a lantern.

6. Spider Ant

Look at this creature. Looks like an ant, right? This is because it wants everyone to think so. In fact, this is not an insect at all, but a spider of the species Myrmarachne formicaria. His method of disguise is called myrmecomorphy.

There are over 300 species of spiders that mimic this appearance.

Why is this necessary? Well, some spiders do it to scare off predators. The fact is that many insects avoid ants, as these harsh small scoundrels can kill anyone who tries to hunt them in a crowd. Therefore, all sorts of spiders, as well as some bugs, wasps and flies decide to pretend to be them - let everyone think that they are just as clear and it is dangerous to mess with them.

And other spiders do it in order to crawl into anthills with impunity and eat the supplies and larvae there. And then calmly exit through the main entrance past the guards, bowing to the locals and pretending that they have been here for a long time and know everyone.

True, there is a problem here: ants can identify their own not only by sight, but also by smell. But especially cunning spiders found a solution. They take the corpse of an ant from the colony in their jaws and walk around the anthill, pretending to be carrying a dead comrade to the cemetery. Straight Hitman: Silent Assassin in the world of insects.

7. False cleaner

There are such fish - comb-toothed blennies. And one of their varieties are the so-called false cleaners. These scaly impudent fellows are unparalleled in meanness and treachery.

Many large marine life such as rays, parrot fish, pufferfish live in symbiosis with a fish called wrasse. They allow them to clean off algae and parasites. As a result, the cleaner receives food, and the one he serves receives a bonus to health and quality of life.

Because it's very unpleasant when you have some kind of arthropod bloodsucker sitting on your belly, and you can't take it off - you have fins.

Comb-toothed blennies, on the other hand, pretend to be cleaner wrasses, imitating their habits and appearance, swim up to a larger fish, and it lets them in without a second thought. With its jaws, the dog pulls out a piece of flesh from the victim who trusted her, and then silently swims away, as if it were necessary.

8. Margai

You ask who this creature can pretend to be? You can see from it that it is a cat, you can’t deceive anyone here! It's true: the margay, or South American long-tailed cat, doesn't try to imitate someone else's appearance. She fakes her voice.

Margai climbs a tree and starts screaming heart-rendingly, imitating the screams of a pinto tamarin cub - this is such a monkey.

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