Imagination can be a child's best friend. What better way to encourage creative play than supplying your little one with toys that will encourage hours of make believe? From play food to pirate ships there are a ton of options to entertain your little tyke. So turn off the TV, skip the video games, and let your preschoolers imagination do the entertaining.
Dress-Up
Kids love pretending to be grown-up so what better way to let them experiment with the "real" world by giving them pretend play costumes and toys. Let your preschool boy or girl pretend to be the mom or dad with a playhouse or baby doll. Make them a mini restaurateur with a kitchen set, fake food, and dishes. There are doctor's play sets with stethoscopes and thermometers and veterinary sets complete with stuffed pet to take care of. Look also for costumes that come with copious amounts of accessories like cops or detectives. For little girls look for preschool appropriate purses that come complete with faux wallet, money, lipstick and cell phone. Little ones of any age love to play school (even if they've never been) so think about investing in an easel, notebooks and pencils to get them started.
Figure Sets
Toy figures and sets can also be a great way to encourage play for preschoolers. Popular TV shows like Dora, Sesame Street and Blues Clues offer tiny plastic replicas of your child's favorite characters as well as important houses, buildings and landmarks seen on the show. Your child can spend hours making up their own adventures for their favorite characters. Playschool and Fisher-Price both offer a wide variety of preschool safe plastic figures, cars, houses and boats that are sold singularly or in sets. Other great options are toy cars, plastic animals and Lego sets that come with figurines.
