Mumsnetters share their imaginative play tips and ideas with The LEGO Group

[BellaMumsnet]

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Whether it’s an indoor fort made of cushions, playing pretend shops or having an intense car race around the living room, learning through play is a great way for children to tap into their imagination. The LEGO Group and LEGO Foundation have launched an online platform called ‘Build the Change’ to encourage children to get creative (while having fun) when thinking about the environment, climate change and biodiversity. This is why The LEGO Group would love to hear your tips for getting your children involved in creative imaginative play.

Here’s what The LEGO Group has to say: "Everybody loves to play, especially children but we know it can be hard to make the time for it. Play is not only super fun but it’s a great way for our children’s brain to develop and to learn new skills and knowledge, especially if play is centred around a topic – such as biodiversity or climate change. Build the Change is a really great opportunity for you to play with your child/ren in a really creative way and hear from them what they think about these topics. Create the space and time – it’ll be worth it!!"

Do you have a fail-safe activity that your children enjoy every time? How do you tease your children away from video games and encourage them to invent their own fun? Do you find it easy to keep them interested in creative play? Do you have tips or ideas for encouraging imaginative play that you can share with other parents? Do you have to inspire your kids to play creatively or do they use their own imagination to dream up new games? How does your child explore the world through imaginative play?

All who post on this thread will be entered into a prize draw where one lucky MNer will win a £200 voucher for a store of their choice (from a list).

Thanks and good luck with the prize draw!

MNHQ

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[SuperLoudPoppingAction]

Tsuyoikochan, as a case in point, ds1 and ds2 were playing lego lord of the rings on their PCs and this week they have been watching the films with me, playing Lord of the rings risk and the related warhammer. The game got them interested in the lore.

[sheilads105]

I use the Alphabet for games...name a toy beginning with A, B, C...etc. A girl's name beginning A, B, C...etc. A boy's name. A Country, a city. Take photos of things in the house or out on a walk beginning with A, B, C...etc. Let's them be creative whilst learning.

[Tsuyoikochan]

You don't need tease kids away from video games, there's plenty of opportunity for using their imagination and a whole range of other skills while gaming. If that's their passion it's no worse than any other hobby.

[BellaMumsnet]

We have selected a lucky prize winner for this prize draw. The winner is @jessamybride - congratulations!

[pineapple99]

Messy play always seems to fire my grandsons imagination.
Things like . . .
playing with ice - frozen in lots of different shapes and sizes - and the tools from his play tool kit like the hammer. Can be fun to freeze things inside the ice for him to get at
making potions. Store up different bottles making sure you keep the lids. He fills them with water and adds a few drops of different food colourings to make potions.

[sarahmc25]

One sure fire way to get them off their screens is home made play dough! They love mixing up the ingredients and colouring the dough and then they use it to make play scenes for their lego men to hang out in. They love mixing up their toys which I didn’t like at first but have come to realise it’s perfect for creative play if not for my OCD!

[jenny007]

got cardboard boxes from shops made them into a dolls house and a tank etc the kids love it they loved the colouring them in and playing with their creations xx

[karla10]

today we made drums from cups with balloons round the top we enjoyed hearing all the different sounds different types of cups made. My boys were in their glory

[ciderchickxxx]

We enjoy making lego, my daughter has learning difficulties so we make letters to learn.

[barbaramcgibben]

S wants to play ‘teacher’ every day and her young sister and me have to be pupils.She is very strict and allows no questions.....I wonder what usually goes on at school.👩‍🎓

[jessamybride]

We love a walk in the garden and local area to pick up lots of leaves and bits and pieces from nature to make pictures and bookmarks and craft projects. We've made bug and bee houses and bird boxes and bird feeders. We've recently made Bird fat balls.

[jlkendrick14]

Encouraging a childs' imagination is so very important.
My two grandchildren absolutely love their lego and it really is any excuse to play with it. We had had some questions about the moon which obviously piqued their interest. Having shown them some pictures of the Apollo rockets, we decided we were going to design our own 'rockets' to get there! Having built those we got to the moon extraordinarily quickly and set about battling with the dinosaurs we found there! After a great adventure, we set off for Earth in our self made rockets.
Roll on the next adventure........

[CardiffChris]

My 6 year old loves to play with Lego, all I have to do is get the box out and he will be there in a flash.

[hareharehare]

I always get down on the floor with them and join in with their ideas. much better than getting them to follow your ideas.

[tomskype]

Water pistols in the bath, in fact any water based toys

[LeeFitz1968]

We like to build an assault course around the garden and play the lava game where you have to get to the tree house by using only the course we have set up , i am rubbish at it but the kids are great

[lillypopdaisyduke]

A packing box every time, with a box of felt tips, we can decorate this into a house, spaceship, pirate ship - or a mixture of the 3.
It can last until it becomes a flying carpet - then recycled.

[JulieAlderson]

I used to create all sorts of different obstacle courses in the garden for my children, and they'd have timed races. It was a great way of helping them to burn off energy and improve their athletic skills.

[Lisapaige24]

I have my children take timeout from video games and television to do puzzles which I make into a competition and drawing and colouring of picture numbers, having them play 30 minutes with different toys so they don’t get bored and it keeps there mind stimulated something I learnt when I was teaching assistant.

[Composer1]

Whatever the present my favourite acquisition was always a large cardboard box: once inside with the flaps pulled over you can be wherever your fancy takes you.

[mandydoherty65]

We enjoy making things from scraps of fabric, sewing or gluing pieces together. Creating paper weights/ornaments with salt dough that we've made. Outdoors we play ball games, hopscotch and love digging in the garden for dinosaur teeth ( pointy stones) and making mud pies decorated with leaves, flowers and twigs etc.

[Chelsecaz]

We love going outdoors and finding sticks/twigs/stones/leafs etc then coming home and making up different pictures with the items. We made our own Christmas decorations this year out of pine cones we found on our travels and the star for the top of the tree was made from the sticks and twigs. We also make up family picture frames with the stones (they are used to make bodies) then we write the names of the people underneath. Quite a few Christmas gifts were made by ourselves this year. It kept the children entertained and also kept the cost down

[Alo2019]

My daughter is struggling with spelling so we trying to make it fun with have 2 baking tins with sand in I write a word in first and get her to copy in second one. We have also been trying to spell out of our food x

[Yolostela]

We've a big journal which we divided up with postit headers, each is for different types of activity - outdoors, indoors, build games (lego), creative art, nature walks, gardening etc. When we are at a 'what shall we do' we delve into our prewritten suggestions. For things like lego we can be practical, build a vase for flowers picked on a walk, a hedge hog home or imagination free choice. Planning for bored moments really helps.