Have you seen the look on children’s faces when they’re fully engaged in imaginative play? They take it pretty seriously! High quality imaginative play allows children to make connections from their real-life experiences to expressing their thoughts and feelings in a creative and curious manner. Today’s activity includes an easy-to-make car wash that will give your child hours of enjoyable play. 

What You will Need 

Process 

Engaging with Your Child 

Children love to engage in activities that allow them to experiment with their social and emotional roles in life. For today’s activity, you can create the carwash with your child or prepare it beforehand. Give your child the chance to take lead in this activity with what interests them. Sit alongside them observing their play and engage with them by following their lead. This activity will allow your child to become a storyteller and act out their thoughts and experiences surrounding vehicles and carwash stations. High quality pretend play will engage your child to act out scenarios in their mind and to use language to express their thoughts and ideas. Find organic opportunities to enrich their language using sound-words such as “vroom, crash, bang, shhhhh, etc.” and descriptive language such as “Wash, clean, soap, fast, slow, spray, wheels, doors, move, crash, etc.”. This enriches children’s language and communication skills in a fun way. It allows them to understand that words are made up of sounds and to associate the words that are linked with certain actions. Have fun and allow your child’s imagination to roam free. 

Tip: You can enrich this activity for older children by adding fake money and the role of a cashier during play. This will be a fun way to strengthen their understanding of numbers through one-by-one counting and comparing quantities.