Hobbit House
Made by local woodworking artist Balthazar Reed. Balthazar uses natural flow concepts to build pieces that blend with landscapes and nature to foster a naturally rich environment.
By acting as a blank canvas on which children can develop their make-believe scenarios, playhouses provide children with rich opportunities to develop play in a variety of settings and scenarios such as house, school, market, or space just to name a few. During imaginative play, children engage in imitating life to gain a deeper understanding of the world around them. Imaginative play is open-ended and unstructured so that kids have complete control over who they are and what happens. They can become whoever they want — chef, superhero, astronaut, doctor, ballerina, animal, mythical creature or anything. They can also reenact everyday situations and mimic parents, teachers, and other adults in their lives matter how kids use imaginative play, it helps them express themselves and facilitates healthy development by promoting social, communication, and imagination skills that in turn lead to growing into critical thinkers that create helpful solutions to life's problems.
As well as encouraging children to grow their imaginations, playhouses are spaces to share while playing imaginative games. Sharing playhouse space with other children and working collaboratively with others is important in learning how to interact with others and develop communication skills. These valuable skills will benefit your child throughout their life but are especially helpful for children to develop in their early years. All of the emerging social skills that children learn while playing in a playhouse will come in very useful once they have started school. These social skills are needed for positive interactions with others both now and in the future.
Often children are heard saying “Let’s pretend...” as they begin imaginative play.
Some pretend themes:
Tea party, house, school, work, restaurant, celebration/birthday party, creating a doll or stuffed animal “hospital” " going to outer space, back in time, or to the future.