Imaginative Play at Age 3

One perk of being a triplet is having automatic playmates. I know that many siblings are playmates as well, but there is something special about having two others that are your exact same age and maturity level that live in your house. Although we often wish our kids would play separately more often, because playing together constantly means there are a lot of disagreements, they love imaginative play and it's more fun when someone is playing along. Our kids have been playing many imaginative play games for awhile now, and these are some of their favorites that are played out over and over at age three.

• Goodnight: They each take turns being the "baby" that is going to bed, or they use a doll or stuffed animal, and the other two sings songs to them as if they are tucking them into bed for the night.

Putting the doll to bed

• EMT's: One child runs away and "falls," and the other two rush over, help the injured child up, help them over to the "hospital," and then use their medical toys to fix the hurt child.

• Doctor: Someone is the patient, often a parent, grandparent, a doll, or a stuffed animal, and the other three are the nurses and doctors taking blood pressures, giving shots, etc.

Jack prefers to use real medical paraphernalia over the medical toys, so this is one fun part of his hospital stays.

• Broken Stroller: Most often a stroller gets a "flat tire" because of a cactus (something I never would have thought of growing up in Michigan!) or mud, and then everyone gets out their toy tools to fix the wheel. 

• Restaurant: Most often this is played with us or grandparents. They like to "wait" on us and get us food that we request.

• Truck Family: Alexis and Faith seem to enjoy trucks just as much as Jack, but one reason is that they pretend they are a mommy truck, daddy truck, and baby truck and they act things out as if the trucks are dolls. 

The vehicles all lined up

• Music / Dancing: When I turn on music, inevitably the kids will get out the dress-up clothes so that they can dance along in tutus and dresses (especially the girls). Jack enjoys strumming along, but he likes to put on a skirt for a few seconds to twirl as well.

This is one of Faith's favorite dancing "dresses"

Jack strumming and Faith dancing

• Music Stand: This is Jack's game. He sets up his stroller like a music stand, grabs a children's book and puts it on the stroller, and then plays the "music" from the book with his guitar.

• Painting outside: This isn't really imaginative play since no one is taking on roles, but all three kids love to "paint" with water outside. A great mess-free activity, although they sometimes get really wet.

Water painting on the patio