How imaginative play enables children to develop skills and competencies?

Question

How imaginative play enables children to develop skills and competencies?

Answer 1

Social skills: children learn to play with other children, sharing, turn taking ,negotiating etc.

Social Skills for emotional development: children explore different characters which helps them understand the world and people around them.

Communication: New vocabulary, putting sentences together, imaginative language, explaining a story line, recall skills (eg if they are reenacting a story), reading labels (eg: labels on boxes, pretend food cans etc)

Physical: small skills such as pouring tea into cup, doing up buttons on dressing up clothes. Larger skills such as chasing bad guys, jumping over things

Mathematical: size-is that dress for dressing up or for a doll, how many places to set at pretend tea party, how many bad guys to kill!

Knowledge and Understanding of the World: exploring what and why, sorting and organising, playing outdoors-building den with the sticks etc.

Creativity-possibility thinking-what happens if I do this, what does that do etc whch leads to areasof learning such as science, maths etc.

Self-esteem: chidlren cant real fail in imaginative play and so it builds up their confidence and mastery skills (self-belief needed to try new things or repeat new skills).