I love watching and listening to my boys engage in imaginative play.  And when they are imagining worlds together with their friends, it gets even better.

I firmly believe that play is the work of childhood, and that imaginative play is one of the fundamental reasons why play is so important.  Kids can learn so much through engaging their imaginations.  Here are just a few of the ways it benefits them:

1. Provides a way for kids to explore the world. When kids pretend, they can be anything they can think of, real or imaginary.  They can be in any place or time they can conceive.  It’s a way that they can put safely put themselves into any world they may want to think about.
2. Allows kids to test out ideas. Imaginative play allows kids to try out ideas and imagine what might happen if they implemented them.  What would it be like if they could fly?  What would happen if they rescued a baby lion cub?  How would they keep warm if they got lost in the woods overnight?  How would they run a house if they were the parents?
3. Helps kids explore their own feelings. Imaginative play can provide kids with a safe venue to make sense of things they see or observe.  It also allows them to work through their darker thoughts as well as feelings of anger, fear, and guilt.  Of course, those we tend to consider more-positive emotions, such as joy, excitement, love, and so on, also get explored.  Imaginative play can help kids to process their strong emotions, reduce stress, and self soothe.
4. Develops social and emotional intelligence. During imaginative play, kids can learn to read social cues, regulate emotions, recognize the how other people are feeling, as well as explore other aspects of human interaction.
5. Cultivates empathy. When kids engage in imaginative play, they can pretend any life they can conceive.  They can try out all sorts of emotions and social skills.  Imagination allows kids to actively imagine being someone else, and through such engagement they can develop empathy.
6. Enables children to rehearse for situations they may encounter. For example, kids can practice how they might act in a situation that makes them nervous or help them to think about how to respond to an unkind remark or to a bully.
7. Supports language development. Kids can test out particular language, vocalize different feelings, explore different perspectives and voices, as well as see the reactions brought on by different wording.  They can try on voices of parents, friends, siblings, or other people in their lives.  In addition, in order to describe their ideas and play creatively with others, kids must develop and improve their explanation skills.
8. Spurs creative problem solving. When kids engage in imaginative play, the sky is the limit as to how they resolve particular issues.  Need a magic snow-making machine or a way to teleport across the globe?  No problem, they can invent one.  And even if it’s more practical things, such as how they’re going to build their house out of the materials on hand, coming up with these ideas requires flexible thinking as well as other important cognitive and higher-order thinking skills.
9. Helps kids to discover new things about themselves. When a child role plays and pretends to act or be a certain way, they may find that it suits them and bring that behavior into their everyday lives.  It may also help them to envision different futures that they may want to pursue.
10. Encourages sharing, cooperation, and compromise. When kids engage in imaginative play together, they each bring their own ideas to the endeavor.  Many times, kids can incorporate all of those ideas into their play.  One person wants to sail a ship and another wants to go to Jupiter — why not sail a magic ship to Jupiter?  Here is a great way to use creativity to cooperate and work together.  But that’s not always possible.  Two people may not be able to ride the same stick horse or wear the same costume or play a particular role or whatever else, simultaneously.  And this is a good opportunity to learn about negotiation, compromise, and sharing.

My list of things which kids can learn through imaginative play could go on and on.  But hopefully the above items are enough to encourage you to allow your kids to spend time creating and exploring their own imaginary worlds.