Every 3 weeks in School-age 3 at RisingOaks | John Sweeney, we rotate the toys on the cart that are available for the children to play with. We love to see the new toys spark the children’s imagination and watch their little minds explore! Sometimes, we ask the children to give us suggestions on what they’d like to see on the cart where other times, we surprise them! Certain children are immediately drawn to specific toys; which is what we keep in mind while choosing what to make available. We know certain children have different interests and we want to make sure we cater to our friends to have something everyone will love. We had no idea how much interest each and every child would take in the cash register that we introduced to the program. When they discovered our cash register, their imaginations were completely brought to life as the children explored with fake money and debit cards that would often be used for numerous games. The cash register brought all of the children together! We saw the children making movie theatres and selling tickets at the “box office”. We also saw children using the bills to practicing their counting in multiples of 5 and 10. Children created a grocery store with the register. They sold items off the cart for an unreasonable amount of money. It seemed that the educators were being taxed on items sold, as their prices were much higher then the children’s prices!
Their use of creativity and wide range of exploration has been amazing to observe. They have all used a variety of ideas and team work to develop a program wide dramatic play area. We love encouraging imaginative play as it helps the children with problem solving skills, enhances their cognitive development, and allows for practice with their language and social skills. Imaginative play Promotes creativity by providing a safe space for children to act out scenarios of their choosing, including situations that they may not be able to experience in real life. It not only builds character, but also helps adults understand children's perspective and how they view and take in the world around them. We look forward to observing the children express themselves with the materials in the prog
ram.
