Naming feelings
Your child at this age is starting to identify with you and to internalize your ideas and guidelines about right and wrong. He wants your approval and may be prepared to put some effort into earning it. He has begun to appreciate you and others as separate people, but also to realize that you and other people have feelings as he does. When he's playing, whether with you or with other children, help him understand your feelings and the probable feelings of other people by naming those feelings. It's as important to help him name and understand feelings as it is to help him name body parts or household items.
Once your child has playmates he likes to be with, try to encourage these relationships. Give him opportunities to invite his friends to come over to play, and take him to the homes of his friends. He'll be influenced by his friends and take pride in showing them his possessions. The art of friendship is an important new milestone in his emotional and social development.
Thinking and knowing
The preschool child is able to use language to communicate her thoughts as well as to describe actions. She can remember more and observe and plan more than she used to, and she has some experiences to draw upon when making choices and decisions. Her vocabulary is growing by leaps and bounds. Playing can help your child learn to express herself and will expand her vocabulary if you encourage her to talk about what she's doing.
Questions and answers are a big part of what makes playing at this stage such a rich learning experience. Your child will ask lots questions -- What's that? and Why? questions -- to learn new words to be able to describe what she sees and to understand how the world works. Whenever you go on outings to a museum, a zoo, an airport, or a nearby construction site, these new environments and experiences will naturally stimulate lots of questions, the answers to which will fascinate a curious child hungry for knowledge. Then you'll notice how she incorporates her experiences into her imaginative play.
Ready to help
Preschoolers are also great helpers and want to he involved when parents are making things. Your child will want to help when you cook or clean, so give him lots of opportunities. If a parent does woodworking, a child can learn to sand and nail or screw pieces of wood together, with close supervision. Your child may enjoy rolling and kneading materials such as modelling clay or Plasticine. He'll start out making simple shapes but might eventually create more complex shapes -- animals, people, cars, or spaceships.
Puzzles and games also help your child understand patterns, to see how things are organized and grouped. Start off with simple jigsaws that have just a few pieces. You may need to fit together the first couple of pieces and then let your child have the satisfaction of finishing the puzzle by fitting in the last piece or two.
Give your child opportunities to play with different materials like leaves, flowers, feathers, fabrics, and egg shells. She might want to create collages of treasures she has found on outings. Together you could draw an animal and then use materials to represent certain features like feathers for a bird, straws for a porcupine, or aluminum foil for the scales of a fish.
