Thursday, May 3, 2012

K is for Knights and a Princess

Photobucket
Blogging through the Alphabet time again.  K this week.  What do I blog about?  My Kindle (Marcy took that one!) or Katrina (but I didn't blog about Connor for C) or kids or kings...

And kings got me thinking about knights.  Which got me thinking about my kids and their imaginary play.

Four knights and a princess.  Though sometimes, Richard gets to be a king.  King Richard the Monkey-Hearted has been one of his names since he was a toddler.

I have watched my kids for years now with their various re-enactments.  Reading Aloud is a big part of that.  We read a book like Robinson Crusoe aloud, and the kids are acting out all kinds of crazy survival stories.

We read a book like Twenty and Ten aloud, and my kids are Jewish children hiding from the Nazis, or they are French children trying to pretend everything is normal so as not to condemn the kids hiding amongst them. 

Their fallback pretend play, though, seems to be either as Roman legions, or as knights.  Trina is a princess in either case.  The boys have given up on convincing her that being a Roman princess really doesn't work, and they just figure a way around it.


Have you ever seen Kindergarten Cop?  Arnold Schwarzenegger is a police officer who ends up having to go undercover as a kindergarten teacher to investigate something or another.  He has no experience at all with working with little kids, and much of the humor lies in his interactions with them.

The best scene in the entire movie though is when he (as the teacher) pretends to be a sheriff and has the children in his class pretend to be deputies.  One little girl is priceless... her response is to whine/pout (in that way only a 4-8 year old girl can whine/pout)... "I'm not a policeman!  I'm a princess!!"

Trina could have played that part.

She says variations on that all the time.  Yesterday at the bookmobile, Bill said good-bye with "See you later, alligator!" and Trina stuck out her lip and did the whine/pout thing... "I'm not an alligator!  I'm a princess!!!"

We simply cannot let her watch that scene.  She doesn't need the encouragement.


Anyway, back to pretend play.  I've always admired how my kids can create some imaginary world and play their parts.  It is amazing to see how they can work through some tough issues in their pretend play.  They have the chance to "try out" different personalities and points of view.

I love it.  I'm glad it is something they have continue to do.

What about your family?  Do your kids play in imaginary worlds?  Do they have a fallback scenario like the knights and princess that my children do?



Go, check out Marcy's blog, where other people will undoubtedly post about fascinating K stuff. But since I'm on the ball this week, there was only the K is for Kindle post going as I typed this.  With a link to some amazing free Kindle books for kids.  Books like The Legend of King Arthur and his Knights.

3 comments:

Kym said...

Yeah, I'm quite familiar with the whine/pout thing - my DD still does it sometimes at age 10!

this brought back memories of our middle ages study a few years ago, when my boys wrote up their own code of chivalry, designed their own coats of arms, and we had a medieval feast at which I 'knighted' them with inflatable swords and shields. One of our great homeschool memories!

Unknown said...

I love this post.

Ben does a lot of pretend play. It's hard by himself, but he manages to do it! He had a lot of imaginary friends when he was little. They could put on a whole play for me!

Nicole said...

Kindergarten Cop is one of our FAVORITE movies! So funny! Our favorite scene is when they are on their way to the town and his partner is sick and she trips and falls. My kids just DIE laughing! (Cruel, I know.)

I, too, love imaginary play to the point that I let messes almost get out of hand because they are so "into it"! I often look in the backyard and see some strange things going on. LOVE IT!