Imaginary play is such a great activity for toddlers. It helps foster creativity, develops language and social skills through interacting with other children, and provides a means to strengthen their problem solving skills.
My kids are great at initiating their own imaginary play, but they really thrive when I set up a themed imaginary playtime for them. This camping themed imaginary play was such a hit with my kids, it took me 5 minutes to set up, and kept their creative minds turning for 2 HOURS! It’s definitely an activity that you have to give a try.
Here are some ideas that we included in our camping imaginary playtime:
Tent and Sleeping Bag Setup
We first setup our tent and laid some sleeping bags inside. I have to take a second to talk about how awesome this pop-up tent is. I absolutely hate putting together tents that have all the different rods that you have to assemble. So, when I found this tent, I knew I had to get it. You literally just pull one string on top and it pops open. It’s so easy! Once we found this one, we got rid of those other kind of tents and this pop-up tent is the only type of tent that we will use anymore!
Make a Campfire
Next, the kids made a campfire to warm up by. We laid out some paper towel rolls and toilet paper rolls as the logs. Then, the kids ripped up red and orange construction paper for the fire. They love ripping anything so they thought this was the best thing ever.
Roast Marshmallows
Once our campfire was ready and the kids were done marveling over it, we roasted some marshmallows. They each got a popsicle stick and a marshmallow and pretended to roast it over the fire. They even blew on the hot marshmallow before eating it and pretended to make s’mores with it.
Have a Picnic
This one was my 4 year old’s idea. As I was setting up the tent, he ran and got our cooler lunch box and filled it up with our play food, plates, and a toaster hahah. We found some pretty cool play food that you can actually cut in half.
Make a Map
I drew a quick little map for us to follow while hiking and canoeing. I just drew a simple winding trail with trees, a river, and our tent. Then my 4 year old added storm clouds at the top of our map, a snake on the trail, and a couple fake trails for us to “accidentally” get lost on. Following the map around our house was the best part of our imaginary play. The kids took the lead and kept coming up with trails we needed to follow and sticky situations that we got into. This is were their imagination really soared.
Sing Campfire Songs
My 2 year old daughter loves to sing. She sings songs all throughout the day. So I definitely had to add in some campfire songs to sing around the fire. After we sang her favorite songs (Baby Shark, Family Fingers, Johnny Johnny, etc), I pulled up YouTube on the tv and we learned some new kids’ campfire songs.
Binocular Search
We also broke out our binoculars and went for a bird watch. Some of the bird watching was play pretend as we ran around pointing out different colored birds and told tales of what they were doing. Other times we spotted birds on the YouTube kids songs that I left playing in the background.
If you don’t have binoculars, adding in a break for craft time to make some binoculars would be a great idea. Just staple 2 toilet paper rolls side by side, attach a string for them to hang it from their neck, and decorate with whatever supplies you have.
I had to end our playtime after 2 hours because it was time for lunch and a nap, but I was planning on more binocular searching afterwards. I was going to hide some of the kids’ stuffed animals throughout the house and have them search with their binoculars for them. Any stuffed animals would work, but I especially wanted to use our bears, foxes, and wolves. These would be good ones to hunt for in the woods.
I hope you love this imaginary play as much as we did! Check out some of our other Imaginary Play Ideas linked below.
