Learn to Play – Explaining Pretend Play

2022

Long term and beloved clients Learn to Play run training and information workshops for therapists, teachers, carers and parents specialising in the realm of childhood pretend play. 

It’s largely driven by the work of acclaimed expert Karen Stagnitti, who has developed a number of industry-leading assessment and therapy programs and has titles in the Victorian State Library.

To quote the Learn to Play site:

What is Pretend Play?
There are many ways to describe pretend play. Essentially pretend play occurs when children imagine something. That is, they impose a meaning on what they are doing that is beyond what can be seen. For example, they might be feeding a teddy bear, but the teddy bear is sick and needs a doctor; or they might be pushing a truck in the sand pit, but the truck gets a flat tyre and runs out of petrol; or they might be sitting in a box with a stick, but the box is a boat and the stick is a fishing line and they have just caught the biggest fish they have ever seen!

Pretend play is an essential developmental stepping stone for all kids; there was a need to help explain it to non-professional carers in an engaging way, so Karen wrote a book.

There are essentially two ‘voices’ – a first-person account of a four-year-old (sorry, four years and ten months), and an adult, therapist-style voice explaining what’s happening as the child plays; the goal is to give understanding at both levels – adult and child – into what pretend play is happening, and how the adult might facilitate effectively. 

We were given the text and raw (purposefully happy-snap style) photographs; we settled on two distinctly different visual presentations for the child and adult voices and turned the book around in quick time. We also handled the print run through our network of resources in quick time.