But that hasn't stopped us!

Here is the trojan horse:
http://www.urbanfibers.com/fpdb/images/horse.jpg
Dig his fancy pencil legs?
And who would have thought there were Greek warriors hiding inside? Adhesive velcro rocks!
http://www.urbanfibers.com/fpdb/images/horseopen.jpg


Then, I snuck up on Sam and asked him who was in this cheery dinner party.
http://www.urbanfibers.com/fpdb/images/hecubadinner.jpg
Apparently, it's (L to R): Cassandra, Hecuba, and Priam, along with the hunter who brought the bear and shark meat for them to enjoy at their feast.

Imagination is just the coolest thing. Of course, if playmobile came out with an ancient greek history line, we'd probably end up buying it, but for now our ragtag assortment will do.

What kind of imaginative play have you caught your kids doing?

Tara

I'm thinking you need to get busy making some toga wearing bendy dolls LOL!

That horse is great!

Eli's play is mostly based in narratives he constructs.
He makes up long, complicated stories with characters (who can be anything living, dead or mechanical) that do all sorts of things and sometimes the stories interlace and overlap.
He is very imaginative, but very much on his own terms. Very rarely he will act out the skeleton of another story, but it's always transformed in some way...sometimes, he includes bits of other stories he's heard.
It's funny to hear tales of my own childhood re-emerging through his characters and vision.

Just yesterday, he told me a 45-minute (no lie) tale about how some people went to a buffet where they ate Na'an and pudding until they threw up on the table, but then they were hungry again, so they started eating again until they threw up, but the restaurant manager was trying to get them to leave, but they would'nt and the police were called...and on and on and on....until one of them had to call his wife to get them out of jail, but she wouldn't come because she thought what he'd done was stupid and on and on and on....

the most creative the play gets here lately is let's try to make it look like Adam hit Lauren rather than Austin hit Lauren.

:rolleyes:

My kids haven't ver reenacted stories like this. :-( What am I not doing? I try to get hem to do it... try to help them get started... it's almost as if they are thinking, "what's the use?"

I know they are thinking that it's much more fun to bop someone on the head with a piece of play food than it is to pretend to COOK it.

Hey there.

I don't think you're doing anything wrong. I think Sam's **** remarkable...with his intense interests in historical periods. I was too when I was a wee kiddo, but my son couldn't care less about the Greeks or the Romans or the Whosywhatsits.
He cares about trains.
And Schuyler cares about animals.

And all their play pretty much centers around those two interests.
But they also don't have a lot of playmates...I have a friend who has SEVEN children...she calls them "the wiggling mass" because that's exactly what they are - one HUGE wiggling mass. All of their play centers around each other because they are all so *present*...if that makes sense...They have imaginations and play imaginatively, but always with one another...or their play involves others...because there are always others around. They also each take on different roles..like there's the antagonist, the tattler, the defender, and on and on.
So, I wouldn't think there was any deficit in a family of four children...where most of their time and mental energy was taken up with their brothers and sister...I would think that is absolutely normal...and necessary in some ways.

:)

Heather, I don't think there is anything wrong or bad about NOT pretend playing ancient history. That just happens to be what goes on here. My OP was a half-joking lament about the lack of toys that speak to Sam's interests, and my gratitude that we are doing just fine without prefab stuff. And I think that if he hadn't been such an early reader, and such a fluent reader, and so deeply interested in ancient history, he'd be pretend playing entirely different stuff. That said, he also does a lot of pretend play that is concocted in his own head. Or ancient history, heavily embellished (like the time when young King Tutenkamen, before he died, discovered dinosaur fossils in the riverbed of the Nile, and made a Natural History Museum in his palace, and so on).

Also, I agree with Jennifer about the multiple kid factor. It's so quiet here most of the time, and by virtue of being an only child, Sam does a lot of his playing solo. When he plays with his friends, they pretend play entirely different stuff, because his friends could not care less about who stole the luck of Troy. So at home, he can play about whatever he wants most of the time, without having to negotiate play topics with a sibling. I'm sure that if he had siblings, there would be plenty of wood-food-head-bopping. ;)

Dannielle, I'm working on those toga dolls, lol!

Tara

oops!

I sooo didn't mean it the way it came out. (it had been a bad day, I am thinking!)

<little bit of tongue in cheek>
So, if they always play the antagonizer... they still have no imagination, right? ;-) BTW- that would be Austin, in case you are wondering. lol

</tongue in cheek>

You are right... the other kids take up the energy, etc. I just want some peace and quiet! lol

Also it must feel really rewarding to see him reenacting things that you have read him. I know that for myself, I wonder if the kids even remember any of the stories 5 minutes later. THAT has to be a good feeling... knowing he is getting it and understanding it.

Too funny about King Tut and the dinosaurs. THAT is a good one!

It's actually him reading all of this himself! (He's a self-taught-at-2 reader.) I am somewhat ashamed to admit that I need him to teach me what's been going on in the ancient world...unlike him, I don't have time to read a couple of hundred pages per day. :p I have a hard time keeping up with him. He's currently reading and rereading SOTW V1 cover to cover along with most of the supplementals...but his favorite periods are still ancient Greece and now ancient Rome. I really wish he would let me read to him on a regular basis, but he hasn't been into that for a while, beyond the one bedtime chapter every night. But when I think about it, when I was reading at a 6th+ grade level, I didn't want my mom to read to me either. I think he is a typical asynchronous gifted child. His typical day is readreadread, then playplayplay, pretending about whatever he has been reading, which is almost always history. Today he spent most of the day pretending to be Julius Caesar. Which was fun, because I got to be Cleopatra for part of the day. ;)

And I do think it takes imagination to be the antagonizer. Heaven knows my sister and I were pretty creative when playing tricks on each other! ;)

Tara