Welcome to my Blogging from A to Z April Challenge for 2019! The A to Z Challenge is a blogging event held each April. Bloggers create posts from A to Z beginning on April 1st and ending on April 30th. There is a post scheduled for each day of the month (except for Sundays) with each day corresponding to a sequential letter of the alphabet.
Today is letter Q...always a challenging post. But we're using one of the Boy's first words to move forward with a topic of toddler play. Today's word is Quack and our post is all about animal play.
Most kids are pretty interested in animals. It's one of those early play staples.We live on a farm, so obviously the Boy had some early on animal exposure. We have cats, dogs, pigs, cows, our hated barn pigeons, and the wild animals that come with living in the northwoods. He was introduced as an infant to how the animals live and eat and sound. He loves playing with the dogs and cats, loves going out to the barn and field, and he especially loves when we have baby pigs.
It's always fun to see the real thing...we enjoy our trips to a local safari park. But when the cold weather is here, we'd rather do a little indoor animal play. When he was still immobile and itty bitty, we started off with Lenny...his lamb. Lenny is his naptime companion and was a good bridge between real animals and play animals. Lenny is his good buddy now and he recognizes him as both a plaything and a representation of a real animal. He loves to "baa" with Lenny.
Imaginative and representative animal play has expanded as the Boy has gotten older. He got an A to Z animal set (Little People) for Christmas just before he turned one and got this fun barn and some additional animals (Battat) from his Nana and Papa this last Christmas. We play with the animals in small groups or all at once, in conjunction with the barn and without. Sometimes it's just going through sounds or talking about the letters they start with. Sometimes, we move into extended imagination play.
We have recently been able to engage him in more realistic play with the animals. He tries to feed Lenny or lead the farm animals to the feed buckets on the barn. He puts the larger animals in their stalls. We move them around and make animal sounds. He pretends to get his farmer to ride on the horse.
But really, anything goes when we get into these imagination situations with the animals. The jungle animals might live in the barn or the horses might bed down next to the fire engine. The dog climbs the roof and the cat drives the car over the top. He has learned the realistic applications of the animals as we go through Old Macdonald Had a Farm or talk about what different animals eat and what their babies are called, but he also knows that he can play beyond those boundaries. He knows what silly play is and he has a good time with it. It's fun to watch his little imagination bloom.
Are you an A to Z Blogger too? Leave me a comment so I can repay the visit.
Not an A to Z Blogger, but love the idea? Go here to see what other fun you can find in the challenge.
Miss a prior 2016 A to Z post? Find your missing link down below...
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