Creative Play List
Job and Family Services - Foster Family Training
The ABC’s of Positive Parenting for Foster Parents
Functional play is what very young concrete literal thinkers like to do, while they talk or sing or hang on you while your are trying to cook dinner:
Do dot-to-dot coloring books work puzzles, play lotto, draw, make cards, work with clay, stir cookie dough, sew, nail boards together, make mud pies, scrub the paint off your car, paint, mop, sweep, vacuum, put models together…
Relational playis what young concrete literal thinkers and beginning readers and writers like to do, while they play with friends or watch TV or roughhouse and do just about anything for attention:
Pretend-to-play drug store or car repair shop or hairdresser, make boondoggle bracelets, play house with dolls, play yahtzee or dice, play cops and robbers, pester you to play card games like gin rummy or sequence, solve ‘what if’ logic problems, make collections of pokeyman cards or coins, play hangman or word games like scrabble or checkers, play uno, make puppets or valentine cards, beg to go to the museum, or to go fishing, or play baseball,write a book, keep a diary, lock it up and then lose the key, have tantrums and pout for long periods…
Pre-operational play is what older middle childhood-age thinkers like to do when they show off for their friends, entertain their friends, argue, and tattle on each other:
Read comic books, make up fantasy war games, ask to throw darts, design bridges with k-nex blocks, construct legos vehicles or scenes, model clay objects, study or draw maps, put up the star galaxy on their ceiling, play memory games, build a fort, sleep in it, go to camp, play war games, beg to play ice hockey or to ride horses, build a go-cart, plant a garden, play with dolls, keep chickens, ice stake or roller blade, play the piano….
Operational play is what older more abstract thinkers doing a more private and conspiriatory manner, in the company of their peers, as they come to realize that adults and parents can not really read their minds or make them feel guilty about their transgressions or tall tales and other misdemeanors.
These older more abstract thinkers are capable of having a secret mental and physical approach to life, as they begin to dream and fantasize about their teen years and how badly they want to be adults. They make their parents miserable if they are not listened to and given privileges as they earn them, so they will feel appreciated and “grown up”:
Shop if you’re a girl, play jock sports if you are a boy, write or draw own version of cartoons, read magazines, doodle in books, take mystery trips, beg to stay out late, make poor judgment decisions, want a job, refuse to help around the house, talk dirty, go to movies, play video games, hate and love the other sex, take pictures, make scrapbooks, travel in cliques, spy on unpopular peers, refuse to “rat” or tell the truth, watch “who wants to be a millionaire,” dream about sex, refuse to talk to their parents, except to ask for money, refuse to play games or do family activities…
