With so many different types of dollhouses to choose from, it’s hard to know which one to go for. Whichever doll’s house you choose, we recommend you go for one that has opportunities for figures to move from one space to another. Even a simple one-room house can work if you have a front door that dolls can pass through. Windows to look through are another interesting feature. As well as seeing how figures move about the house, a doll’s house enables children to view things from a different perspective; from the outside in, and of more than one room at a time. They can see the whole story at once – the baby in its cot in the bedroom, the mother in the garden, the brother stealing sweets from the kitchen cupboard. They can see Daddy coming into the kitchen from the living room, about to catch the unsuspecting son in the act of taking the sweets. It’s a kind of interactive picture that they can control. Here we outline the different styles to help you decide which doll’s house is best for your child. Do you remember when you were young and you had the chance to play with an incredible dollhouse? The reason why dollhouses are such an amazing item for young children to play with is that they can offer too many incredible hours of pretend play. This is why every little girl, should have the chance to play with a great dollhouse.
What are doll’s houses and why are they so important to children?
Doll’s houses have been a fixture in the play world of children for hundreds of years, but it’s reasonable to assume that long before then, children were acting out familiar scenes from their lives using props on a small, child-size scale. Archaeologists have uncovered toy-like figures dating back to pre-history. It’s clearly a primal urge.. of dollhouse set play for boys and girls, and how best to ensure an inclusive approach. We’ll also look at some of the different types of dollhouse furniture and the kinds of figures and families that work best in a doll’s house. And finally, we’ll look at ways in which you can extend and develop your child’s doll’s house play over many years.There are many benefits of playing with a doll’s house for children, from the development of fine-motor skills and ideas of classification and materials to the growth of social skills and emotional intelligence. A doll’s house can also be one of the most enduring and therefore cost-effective toys you’ll buy, and it’s no coincidence that many of them get handed down through the generations. If you are lucky enough to have received an ‘heirloom’ you can invest in new furniture and figures to bring the house up to date. Here we outline some of the developmental benefits of playing with a doll’s house.
Social skills
Social skills are the skills we use to communicate and interact with each other, both verbally and non-verbally, through gestures, body language, and our personal appearance. Human beings are sociable creatures and we have developed many ways to communicate our messages, thoughts, and feelings with others. A doll’s house is one of the few toys where two children can sit next to each other and play alongside each other, rather than opposite or in some kind of group formation. If it’s a big-ish house there will also be enough in front of them to share without too much need for a dispute about who gets to play with the sofa and who gets the bed. In this way, children can learn to play cooperatively and to become aware of the behavior of their peers in a fun and simple way. It’s also a great way for ideas and stories to develop without the pressure of a potentially critical gaze on them. If you’ve ever noticed how conversations seem to flourish in the car, it’s the same principles at play; the conversation and exchange of ideas are free to grow. Children who play with dollhouses together are often children who know how to share and to rub along with their peers.
Emotional intelligence
Acting out the stories and scenes they encounter in everyday life, allows children to understand the family they live in and the world around them. Even if the ‘family’ in the doll’s house is one of mice or bunnies, children are able to explore characters and personalities via their play figures and the dramas that unfold between them. In doll’s house play, children can weave ordinary elements of everyday life into a fantasy narrative, that they can control. Big themes and powerful thoughts and feelings can be more easily processed on the doll’s house scale, giving this kind of play a therapeutic edge. It also allows children to understand the power dynamics within their family: who is in charge, what the consequences are for bad behavior. It’s also a chance for children to experience being the adult and telling off misbehaving children. Often their punishments are more extreme than their parents would ever impose! We talk a lot about schemas at One Hundred Toys, but there are also schemas for relationships and interactions (and everything else). We’ve all developed mental models for how to react to an angry person, a friendly person, a pet, etc. All this comes from real-life experiences and is rehearsed endlessly in doll’s house play. Doll’s houses enable children to pare back interactions to their most basic forms and repeat them endlessly until they understand them.