Bella’s Play Time

Today the Bookworm has a post up about her little Cherub’s play time. Cherub is just about the same age as Bella and I love comparing the two of them. It is interesting to me how similar their play times are.

Bella is doing lots of imaginary play too. She spends most of her time with her Pooh friends, either carrying the stuffed animals or sometimes playing pretend and talking to them without the stuffed animals present. Last night she was giving Kanga medicine in the kitchen while the kanga doll was still on her bed. She started that while we were in Texas where she didn’t have the stuffed animals. It’s not really surprising since Pooh is sort of her gospel right now. We read from the complete stories every day at nap time and bed time. Bella talks to Christopher Robin too and goes shopping with him. And sometimes she puts herself into the stories, she runs around and says she’s “escaping”—I guess like Pooh does during the flood because that’s the only place I can think of that she’s heard the word.

She cooks play food—especially in her new kitchen; but sometimes using the coffee table or a stool in the kitchen as her cooktop. And sometimes she eats and drinks imaginary food with no props, and hands me little handfuls of things, especially “chokit”.

She plays with her doll, pretending to change diapers, nurse her, take her for walks or to the store. She talks to her doll, saying “It’s time to play,” and “It’s time for shopping,” and “It’s dinnertime.” Or else, very cute, she mimics my speech to Sophia, “Come on, Dolly, let’s change your diaper.”

This morning she slung a bag over her shoulder and announced she was going to the store. She likes to put on shoes and coat and hat and grab her keys and pretend to go.

She likes to sit and turn the pages of books and look at the pictures. If she knows the book really well, sometimes she’ll “read” it, reciting the words she knows. Sometimes she’ll narrate the pictures, describing what’s going on in her own words, or paraphrasing the story.

We don’t have as many toys as Cherub, no Legos or Duplos or Playmobile, etc. Mostly because she’s the oldest while Cherub is the youngest. I suspect that eventually we’ll start to get such toys. Not that I’m in a hurry to get more toys, mind you. We also don’t have any board games. I’m not sure Bella would be much interested yet anyway. She can’t count yet and doesn’t have a very good sense of numbers or colors, which I think are both prerequisite for most games. And since she never sees us playing them (we used to when we were first married; but haven’t in a while), I think it might be hard for her to get the idea.

She loves to sing and sings throughout the day. Hymns, songs from her songbook, songs I’ve sung for her, songs from Pooh. Often she makes up her own songs as well.

She got new markers and crayons and paper from her grandparents in Texas and occasionally pulls them out to color. She sometimes draws on her easel as well. But never for more than a minute or so.