Weekend Wonders

Is Imaginative Play becoming endangered in our young children's lives?

The importance of Imaginative play in child's development cannot be stressed enough.

In our modern overly technological society a child's imagination is often paralyzed with fast-moving pictures of a television set or brightly colored 3-D worlds of computer games.

Often, parents concentrate on getting their preschoolers school-ready by paying a lot of attention to learning the alphabet and numbers but forgetting how important it is to nurture their child's imagination.

A number of psychological studies have shown that pretend play prepares children for life in the real world because during play children learn important life skills like taking turns, sharing responsibility, empathy and many others.


Child directed imaginative play fosters and builds creativity. Creativity will serve your children their whole lives. Creativity allows us to see new solutions to problems, see the “light at the end of the tunnel”, envision new inventions and the list goes on. We give our children the ability to create their own lives when we allow them as children to create their own play.

As parents we must strive to nurture our children’s ability to engage in creative, imaginative play

There Was a Child Went Forth
There was a child went forth every day,
And the first object he look’d upon,
that object he became,
And that object became part of him
for the day or a certain part of the day,
Or for many years or streching cycles of years...
-Walt Whitman, from Leaves of Grass

Creative, imaginative play, oh to have the free young will of a child, who adorns many different costumes and takes on multitudes of persona's in their everyday lives. I loved dressing up as a young child and role playing different characters. Quite a shy child, I was no doubt fascinated in my own fantasy world of character play! Mum fostered our imaginations with many different props and would play along with us too. My mum still fosters great creativity with my children when they visit too ...

We have started putting together a "costume box" here at home, which will possess a mixture of class dress ups (from the local op shop) and superhero inspired costumes. This is where I decided that well if I could sew Jaxon nappy covers, then I'm sure with a simple pattern and steps outlined, I could create something "imaginative" for Caleb and Jaida too.

A simple "google" search and I had found something to aspire towards - THE SUPERHERO CAPE! To make it more functional though, I decided that seeing there were two layers, I would create a motif on both sides, therefore effectively creating 2 superhero capes in 1!

My Weekend Project Commenced!

Acknowledgements must go to pukingpastilles for the superhero cape tutorial and superman motiff template and thelongthread "make it monday" blog for the free cape pattern download. Do take the time to have a look at both blogs, and have a go, the patterns and instructions were extremely well set out, simple and easy to follow.

Friday saw me taking a modest trip down to our local fabric shop to gather supplies. I decided with the first attempt some "bargain bin" cotton fabric would be the way to go (with aim in mind,that should I succeed, then I would up the anty with some more satiny type material (lol)) The motiff's required felt, so the local craft shop was my next stop.

Armed with materials and patterns, Saturday and Sunday the project began!

1. Templates were traced with simple chalk and then I laid each piece on top, pinned and cut again. I did have to do internet conversions to turn yards and inches into measurements I could understand!



2. These were the contrasting colours I chose for Caleb and Jaida.

3. Caleb requested a superman and lightning bolt, Jaida wanted stars and princess crown. I had to trace and cut these with felt, and sew (using a zigzag stitch) onto each side prior to sewing together. This was probably the most time consuming part of the project.

4. With right sides facing each other, I sewed the fabric together, leaving space to turn right way out again at the end

Superhero Caleb sports his new two looks

Caleb and Jaida, two little superheroes

Close up of Jaida's princess crown.