Researchers emphasise the value of pretend and creative play for children, with clear benefits to their development.

It offers children the opportunity to learn about themselves and the world around them. Imagination and creative play experiences are some of the first ways that children learn about their likes and dislikes, interests, and abilities. It gives them a chance to experiment with role-playing and make sense out of what they’ve observed from the world around them. This is especially important in situations that are confusing, scary or new life issues. Playing doctors with a play set may help them become comfortable visiting the doctors or getting their vaccinations. Through this type of play, children can become more at ease and prepared for life events. A child could prepare for a new sibling through play with a baby doll. Parents can help this development by providing children a variety of regular access to dolls, stuffed animals, or puppets. Through imaginative play with these toys, children can easily attribute feelings, actions, and ideas to their play ‘people’ and ‘animals’ and use them as a way to explore their own feelings and ideas. 

Children can develop important complex social and higher-order thinking skills through play. It can help build a child's social and emotional intelligence. How we interact with others is an important factor in our lifelong success, happiness and in building future leadership skills.                                                                            
It can help integrate knowledge and skills. Blending recently acquired knowledge together helps increase a child's learning. An example of this can be seen when children play 'markets' with pretend food. They sort foods into groups, use math concepts to determine prices and food costs, use writing to communicate by making signs, experiment with shapes and weights as they organise the market and work collaboratively as they play together.

Browse below for a large range of creative play toys.