Schleich continues to bring our children high quality toys that promote pretend play and language development. The Sunny Day Mobile Farm Stand, part of Schleich’s Farm World line, includes over 25 pieces that are perfect for telling a story.
A mother and son duo take their farm foods by horse and carriage to the nearest farmers market. The bench they rode on transforms to a shelf, the carriage sides transform into the farm table, and all the goods are placed in baskets to display for customers.
Our toy testers loved creating this story as they traveled from one part of the room to the next, crouching down and crawling practicing gross motor, and then grasping and moving the small crops around practicing fine motor skills too. As they initially set up the farm stand, they negotiated with each other on how much crops should cost (stickers included).
“Potatoes have to be more than lettuce, because there’s more of them. So put $2.00 next to the lettuce.” They helped customers, negotiating prices and selling certain items, “the bread is freshly baked yesterday! And it’s only $1.00”
The props offered in the Sunny Day Mobile Farm Stand allowed the story to move in different ways, especially with the inclusion of two characters. There was so much language and dialogue between the mother and son that allowed for more sophisticated role playing.
Participating in pretend play is essential to a child’s development. It helps them use language to describe their thoughts and ideas in the form of story telling. It helps them to build their vocabulary skills as they describe a scene and create dialogue. When children participate in pretend play, they are exercising creativity and practicing their social-emotional skills as they take turns, listen to others, and play cooperatively.
The greatest thing about the Sunny Day Mobile Farm Stand, and so many of Schleich’s other play sets, is that children somehow never play with them the same way every time. The story is always changing, evolving, and getting richer. Children are always creating and retelling a new experience, practicing and growing their developing play and cognitive skills.
