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2-7 years Playing with toys is a way for children to explore the world around them - including jobs in the world. If you want to expand the scope of work they explore, here are nine tips to help them enrich their play and have more fun at work!   PROVIDE WORKERS To explore the world of work, your child needs some workers! Children love giving jobs to their toys, so there’s no need to buy toys with special work outfits. Make sure there are some teddies, dolls, soft toys, or action figures, and watch as your child turns them into teachers, bus drivers, fossil hunters, and rock stars – and a different set of jobs the next day.   INSPIRE WORKPLACES Children don’t need much to create a workplace either. Their imagination will turn building blocks into a building site, a tea set into a café, and a few tools into a repair business. If they run out of ideas, you can suggest some things from around the house – a few food tins and boxes are enough to create a supermarket, and a towel, hairbrush, and elastics make a great hairdressing salon. All you need to do is give your child the freedom to run with their imagination, and help them pack everything away at the end of the day.   TAKE IT OUTDOORS Taking your child outdoors opens up a whole new set of jobs for them to explore through play. They can become construction workers in the sandpit; lifesavers at the beach; astronauts in the cubby house; and divers at the pool.   STRETCH BOUNDARIES If your child has any toys that are dressed for a particular job, especially those with traditional gender roles, encourage your child to give them different jobs occasionally. It’s a good way to break stereotypes and plant the idea that who are you now do not determine who you can become. Maybe your princess doll could be the astronaut! Would your superhero toy like to be the teacher today?   EXTEND THE PRETEND Your child’s play will probably focus on the jobs they see personally and in books, television shows, and movies. If you suggest some less familiar jobs from time to time, you’ll expand the range of jobs they are aware of and broaden their future aspirations. Would Monkey like to be a snake catcher today? He’s very brave and good with animals!   BUILD VOCABULARY Sometimes your child will want to play without you, but other times they’ll want to chat away with you, or even invite you to join in. These conversations give you opportunities to develop your child’s work vocabulary: equipment – Teddy looks very professional with that stethoscope. tasks – Wow, Monkey repaired that engine quickly. workplaces – Does Kitty grow roses at a nursery, or at the botanic gardens? names of jobs – Rabbit makes a good receptionist.   PLANT SEEDS Your conversation can also plant ideas about how careers develop: interests – What did Monkey like to do when she was little? Is that why she decided to become a mechanic? education – Where did Kitty learn to be such a good farmer? Did he have to study special subjects? career change – Does Teddy want to be a hospital doctor forever? I bet she could become a researcher if she wanted to and help find the cure for a disease!   MAKE IT PERSONAL Your child won’t need to make any career choices for a long time yet, but it’s good to throw in the occasional comment or question about what they might do in the future: It looks like Mouse loves being a truck driver. Would you? I really like this house you built me. Maybe you could be an architect one day! What parts of an astronaut’s job would you like? Even if your child announces I’m going to be a doctor when I grow up, they’ll probably change their mind next week or next month. And that’s a good thing – their ‘job’ at the moment is to have fun, to use their imaginations, and to explore the world (and sometimes the world of work) through play.

Toys are not better than natural materials. But they are not inherently worse, either (setting aside arguments about sustainability). The thing that makes an object interesting is the range of possibilities it offers. You can do a lot with clay or Lego. But an electronic toy that makes funny sounds when you press a button? Not so much. Take a look at the mess in your child's bedroom. The best toys are used again and again in different contexts: in construction, in pretend play, in the bath. When I tidy my daughter's bedroom my instinct is to put all the doll's house toys in one basket, the blocks in another and the beads in a third. But as soon as she goes in there to play, it's all tipped onto the floor and she grabs whatever serves her purpose. The images on the 100 Toys blog celebrate beauty and order but we all know that that's not how our children's rooms look most of the time. Toys as tools for thought So here we are at the crux of it all: materials help us to think. If we are building and we want to span a gap between two towers we look around for something to form a bridge. That could be a log or a Lego baseplate. When children encounter a novel problem, they first have to work through it physically. They have to turn over objects in their hands before they can turn them over in their minds. The things we surround ourselves with matter. They help us think through problems. Better tools make for better thinking. The link to schemas When we play with materials in the natural environment, we are solving problems our ancestors would have encountered. How to bridge a gap, how to sharpen a stick, how to enclose a space. We must make do with the same resources: the things we find lying around. And so we fall back on those building blocks of thought: schemas. Enclosing, rotating, positioning, enveloping.