Imaginative Play and The Dolls House (A Review)

One of my favourite things to do is to watch my little girl happily and contentedly playing with her toys by herself. When she doesn’t know I’m there or has just got so completely absorbed in her play that she forgets I’m there and I can watch her with her big imagination creating lovely scenarios with her toys. She’ll talk to them and move them around and boss them about and it’s so adorable. I love to just sit and watch her role playing and I’m often surprised at just how much creativity and imagination such a small person can have.

Imaginative play can help to develop and improve fine and gross motor skills, allows for self-expression and empathy for others and helps to develop problem-solving skills as well as language skills. It’s important to let children sometimes play by themselves allowing them to play exactly how they want to, to develop these skills.

It always makes me smile when her play involves copying off mummy or daddy, like when she makes cups of tea for us or herself with her tea set, and when she follows me round the house sweeping while I sweep and chatting to herself or to her toys or to me.

She’ll sit by her dolls house and talk to the family that live there, tuck them up in bed and put them in the bath, and move the furniture around; completely and utterly involved in this little world she has created. She loves (and so do I) her pretty wooden dolls house ‘Blossom Cottage’. It’s not too big so it doesn’t take up too much space and it is easily moved around by a handle in the roof (Ava also likes to use the handle to post the dolls through!). Blossom Cottage comes with a really sweet little furniture set and a cute wooden family so you don’t have to buy everything separately which is great, and I think it’s a really good price for a nice wooden house. The dolls house with the family really encourage and allow imaginary play, and she can easily play alone or mummy can join in too. I love the creativity a dolls house inspires – I’m not a very creative person at all; but a dolls house and dolls make it so easy to think of ways to play together and brings up unlimited things to chat and think about; I love it. Plus, everyone needs a sheep in their bedroom.

Big Game Hunters have so many lovely wooden toys on their website http://www.dollshouses.co.uk and I especially love the Le Toy Van Play Oven. Wooden toys are my favourite type of children’s toys – I think they look so lovely, and they last really well too.

Ava has very recently started to be interested in dressing up for the first time, inspired by lots of dressing up clothes at her toddler class. We always had a big dressing up box when my sister and I were growing up and we loved role playing in our fancy dress (I was mostly a bride), so I can’t wait to share that love with her and expand her fancy dress collection, while watching that imagination of hers develop even further.

Would I buy it myself? Yes definitely, it looks nice, is a great price especially as you don’t need to buy furniture or dolls separately, and Ava loves it.

We were sent the Blossom Cottage Dolls House & Furniture & Family from Big Game Hunters to review, but all views and opinions are my own and completely honest.