Your guide to activities and fun things to do with your preschoolers, toddlers and kids in Philadelphia, PA

This month we'll be exploring the idea of imagination. I like to believe I have a better than usual sense of imagination--probably due to my being an only child. I entertained myself endlessly by constructing elaborate stories about my imaginary friends, and would play in the cities of my imagination for hours and hours. Even today, although I don't have imaginary friends anymore (unless you count my online ones--heh), I still have the ability to virtually disappear into the books I read, many of which fall into the fantasy category.

My daughter, who will also be an only child, is showing the same abilities. She turned two on June 7, and she'd already been doing pretend play for months. It started with my husband's old cell phone (which we'd taken the battery out of and let her play with); she'd call "gamma" and walk around pretending to talk. It soon moved on to her dolls; she'd gently tuck them into bed, only to "wake" them up a few seconds later.

But it's more clearly blossomed in the last few months; just this morning before she went off to play group (which is what we call her morning care program) she was hopping around claiming to be a Mommy Frog. It was hilarious.

We've been playing with her imagination lately too; she used to like to sit and read books but that's gotten harder recently, so I've begun to tell her stories. I ask her what she wants the story to be about and she usually says "magic!" Her favorite is a story about a magic book that has pictures of animals that come to life--we both pretend to fly around the room like a butterfly, waddle like penguins, and my favorite part is when all the different bears come out and give her giant bear hugs. You know, cause I'm the bear and I'm doing the hugging.

It's such a miracle, watching the light come on in their eyes as they learn the power of pretend. This month we'll talk about different ways to bring that forth and celebrate it. Let's pretend!