How Let's Pretend Play began...from nightmare to inspiration.

As three sisters our family get togethers often turned into discussions of grand ideas that would save the world or at the very least help some of the children having a difficult journey through early childhood and school. When you combine two teachers with quite different strengths and a speech pathologist who prefers to push the allied health world a little bit off kilter, it was always an energetic and creative collation of opinions and plans. We knew we would eventually do something together. Although never very clear on what that ’something’ would be we always knew it would focus on fun, learning and language.

But our ‘something’ - Let’s Pretend Play - took on a bit more impetus for us after near tragedy. In 2016, our worlds were thrown into disarray when Sharna’s beautiful youngest 16 month old daughter fell ill in Thailand. An 8 day holiday became an 8 week nightmare, when she was air-lifted from Phuket to Bangkok where she would remain on life support for more than 4 weeks. 

Our parents joined Sharna’s family in the very early stages but finally had to return home. We considered that there was only one decision left for us to make so we jumped on a plane with our youngest children to be with our sister and her family. As our niece’s health slowly improved we ventured out and discovered some of the most amazing imaginative play centres we had ever seen. On one of our outings we entered a room full of many amazing opportunities to guide children's creativity and learning through play in the constraints of a busy metropolis. One in particular was inspiring - the role-play avenue (although two of us preferred the giant ball pit). Each of us recognised how much need there was in our communities for new and different play experiences. The seed was planted!

With Sharna’s daughter rapidly recovering and the family finally returning to Australia, the ideas grew and our ‘pop-up’ Let’s Pretend Play planning commenced. We increasingly saw imaginative pretend play as perhaps a bit of a “lost” art that was not gaining enough attention as an incredible means for children to learn in context and not in an artificial rote manner. Every single learning moment can be included in well designed role-play. But best of all a child uncovers those learning moments naturally, building their understanding of the world and the words and concepts in that world, at the rate they need. So role-play is naturally graded by the children engaged in it, working at the level of learning each of them need. It is the perfect vehicle for fun, engagement of conversation, movement, concentration and regulation skills, which are all essential building blocks for more formal learning.

Almost exactly 12 months after our frightening experience, the three of us are following our dream and we are finally 'doing something together’. We hope you not only enjoy our journey, but are encouraged and inspired to push the boundaries of imaginative and creative play along with us!