What can we learn from a doll’s house?

Young children delight in engaging in pretend play and enacting scenarios using miniature versions of their worlds or fantasies. Dollhouses, a beloved toy in my childhood, offer the unique opportunity to personalise it. You can either construct one yourself if you're creative and possess exceptional DIY skills, or even purchase one and customise it with colours, scenes, and dollhouse accessories to suit your preferences.

Playtime is one of the most important things of childhood. With imaginary play, your children can create a whole other world by being able to play imaginary things together; however, with a dollhouse, it doesn’t always need to be imaginary, but a little imagination certainly helps. By adding a dollhouse to your home, it’s amazing to see the number of things children will discuss, learn, and imagine together. There’s so much potential for vocabulary and life skills to be learnt from this addition to your playtime. Plus, it’s a place to help kids work through life’s issues in a safe place. So what can your child learn from having a dollhouse?

 

Value

Taking the time to build a toy together as a family can make buying or making a dollhouse so much more valuable to your child, and it will help them take care of it.

 

Imagination & Creativity

When playing with dolls, this sparks your children’s imagination and creativity. If you watch them as they play, you’ll be surprised how simply playing a repeat of your morning routine can inspire new ideas. Naturally, they will draw from their daily lives and knowledge to inspire their play, but that will lead them to new things.

 

Vocabulary Development

If they’re playing the part of ‘Mummy’ or ‘Teacher,’ then they’re going to have to speak like Mummy or Teacher. They’ll probably come out with words or sayings you didn’t know they knew, so be careful what you’re saying around them (this advice is for me too).

 

Life Skills

Playing a game that incorporates real-life knowledge means that players will begin to reflect on life and their skills. They won’t even know they’re doing it, but they’ll start to think about running a house and what they need to do to do it successfully.

 

Fine Motor Skills

The dolls' houses are small and fiddly, so they need good motor skills to do everything. They might even have to fix little broken things in the house, and most of the time, as they are responsible for their dolls, they’ll try to fix them first before coming to you.

 

Problem Solving 

As above, they’ll try and fix things first before running to you with a problem. Perhaps a younger doll will have a problem in the game which the older doll will have to fix; it’ll make them think on a much higher level than they have done before.

 

Organisational Skills

If your kids aspire to manage a household, they must possess organisational skills. The dolls’ house will be something that they own and something they are proud of, so they’ll soon learn organisational skills.

 

Deciding to add a dollhouse to your home can be a big decision for your family, but knowing how much your child can learn from playing with it can make it worth your investment.

Source: https://barnshenn.medium.com/what-can-we-learn-from-a-dolls-house-d49504700f06