Pretend Play – Boats on the river

It amazed me how children can suddenly morph overnight and J has just gone through one of those morphs. One day much of his play was whizzing cars around the floor of the lounge and throwing balls around and then suddenly he’s very much into pretend play. He pretends to be Mike the Knight (a new British Cartoon where Mike is a Knight and each episode has to “Do it right”) borrowing my slippers, wearing a baseball hat backwards and using T’s rocking horse as his trusty stead – this happens at least 20 times a day at the moment and he zooms around the house doing what ever the Mike the Knight does!

So today he decided that he was going to tip out all of the blocks from a box and announce it was a boat I took it as a opportunity to do some pretend play with him.

J boarding his boat on our make believe river

What you need

To recreate our pretend play boats on the river you will need

A Chenille throw (it’s smooth and the boat rides along it easier than our carpet or the tiles which we tried first)
A plastic box of some kind
Solid Cardboard Tube as a paddle, fishing rod and telescope
Some megablocks which were added to the river as fish

How the fun happens

First we tried pulling the boat along the carpet but this kept sticking and turning over which J thought was great fun, however, we then tried pulling the boat along the tiled floor in the kitchen (well that makes a great work out for me but not much fun for Jake as it kept getting stuck in the grouting). So I had a moment of inspiration and put down our chenille throw on the carpet and told J it was a river, well that made his day – first thing we had to splash in the river.

J pretends to splash in the river

You can see our boat which J boarded and then I pulled up and down the river a few times. I decided to extend the play and from our junk modelling collection I got a cardboard tube and suggested to him that it became a paddle for his boat which he then started to paddle whilst I was pulling the boat up and down the river. Sometimes I would pretend that there were rapids or a water fall and occasionally the boat would up turn.

J paddling his boat

J decided that every river needs fish and in his paddle he had the perfect fishing rod – so the things around us – the blocks that he had tipped out of the box became fish in the river and we caught various fish which got put into the boat. It was then decided by J that T should join in – she had been jumping up and down on the side of the box whilst he was in it. So T got in as well and the two of them were pulled along the river together. I  then decided to be a shark and hid under the blanket and popped up – this was amazing and using the timer on the camera I was able to capture this one picture of their faces which says it all (I think I have a couple of actors in the making).

J and T in the boat whilst I pretend to be a shark the timer on the camera captured their faces perfectly