Pretend Finley

Well, this is a pictureless post...are you still with me?  Okay, it'll be worth it, I promise.  Finley has a terrific imagination and has been engaging in some excellent pretend play these past couple of months and I have failed to make a note of it until now.  While he still enjoys our presence nearby when he is playing, he is more than entertaining himself most of the time.  His typical pretend play involves either cooking at this kitchen or grill (making burgers, cooking a cake in the oven, washing his hands in the sink, cracking eggs for pancakes, etc) or working with his fleet of trucks.  A fleet is probably an understatement, but I won't embarrass myself with admitting to how many trucks/vehicles are actually in our playroom...but I digress...he digs with his excavator to make a pile of small koosh balls, wooden trees, mardi gras beads, etc. and is always clear about what he is digging: sand, dirt, or rocks.  In the midst of playing, he has turned to me and said, "this not dirt now, it's sand" before getting back to it.  He loads up his garbage trucks and travels around the playroom picking up trash (some days it's just trash and other days it is stinky garbage, go figure the difference).  His dump truck, fire engine, bulldozer, and cement mixer are often in on the action.  He'll talk to the drivers of these trucks and tell them what to do or simply ask them to stand and watch.  His little firefighter figure has developed into quite a Renaissance Man since he is also the garbage man and more recently the Shuttle Discovery astronaut/pilot.  Most other drivers are one note, just don't put the wrong one in the cab...he'll put him/her back in his/her place (and you, too!).  His play barn is also a great place for pretend play as he usually gets all the animals together for a birthday or puts them all to sleep in their pens.

His imagination can stretch to where he will improvise if he needs something that he doesn't have, like out in the sandbox he wanted a driver for his red truck but since we are people-free outside at the moment, he settled on using a small rock.  When the truck tipped over and the rock tumbled out, he said, "Oh no, the rock-driver fell down and got a boo-boo."  Inside, we put the two chairs from his art table back to back to make a train that he likes to drive and will invite us to sit in the back as passengers, these chairs also serve as a great tunnel for his wooden farm train to pass through.  Trains often go to Boston/downtown, but there are occasionally other destinations like the museum.  When Finley sits on the couch to read a book or watch a short video, he'll often put a pillow on his lap and call it his table before proceeding to eat a pretend meal complete with cookies at the end.

Bath time is always full of great pretend play with Finley.  He likes to make "bath soup" and serve it to some of the other toys floating nearby.  We have a family of ducks that are very popular in the tub and last night they were pretty entertaining.  The green mommy duck, the blue daddy duck, and the baby yellow duck (no figuring the genetics here) were swimming when suddenly Finley picked up the blue duck and said, "Time to go to work for the daddy duck" and pushed him away into the bubbles.  As the baby duck, I asked the mommy duck for a snack and Finley quickly dove his mommy duck underwater, brought it back up, and bonked beaks with the baby saying, "Here's something special for you, baby."  Art imitating life!

I was reminded to do this post after a funny sandbox interaction today in the backyard.  Finley and I were using our big shovels to make a tall pile that he soon renamed a mountain, when he said it was all finished. I said, "Okay, now what?" and he said, "Someone need to climb it."  I asked, "Who could climb it?"  Without hesitation, he said, "Pretend Finley can go up it."  Ha!  He pinched his thumb and pointer finger together and bounced them up the mountain to the top before saying, "Now, here comes Pretend Mommy."  When they were both at the top, Finley said, "They are singing on top of mountain" and no surprise when I asked, they were "singing Hot Potato" (a family favorite!).  I couldn't get over how cool it was that he had inserted his pretend-self (and me!) into his imaginative play :)

I'm sure there are other examples, but I suspect those above give you a good idea of just how creative and imaginative Finley is.  Being a child development major and a preschool teacher, I know how very, very important having an active imagination is and aside from that, it's just plain fun!