More important, children need to try on adult lifestyles. In the world of pretend, when they assign one another roles of mommy, daddy, sister, brother and baby, they are not wasting time in idle child s play. This is serious business. They are practising to be grown up. At the Westbank Day Care Centre, child-care workers understand the importance of replicating the adult world for kids.
Children especially love the housekeeping centre.
They tuck little pans into a miniature oven. They serve imaginary meals. Sometimes they turn the home centre into a beauty shop and give manicures and hair styles to one another. They are practicing life skills when they do imaginative role play, said Dawn Brown, an early childhood educator at the centre. It s also an outlet for what they ve seen adults do.