About ten minutes if useful. Pause, repeat, change or finish anytime.
Say this, or use your own words
Where shall our visitor go?
More words, only if useful: A visitor wants to get somewhere in our pretend place. Where shall it start? Where could it go? You can draw a way, tell me a way, or ask me to trace it. We can change the destination whenever you like.
Ready in a moment
A flat page or the route-map aid. No walking course, obstacle, tied cord or real journey is needed. Choose a fresh imaginary start and destination if earlier play is unavailable.
A loose play path
- 0–2 minutes: Ask for an imaginary start and destination, or offer two named broad patches to choose. If the visitor wants to stay put, follow that story or choose another start.
- 2–5 minutes: Make a path, a set of spoken directions or an adult-traced route. Use ‘beside’, ‘around’ or another useful word only where it matches this particular scene.
- 5–8 minutes: Try the chosen representation in pretend play: trace, direct a trace or describe the journey. Ask ‘Did our visitor reach the place you chose?’ A described trip is not a physical test of a built route.
- 8–10 minutes: Keep the route or change one part. If no try happened, the route remains a useful plan; do not invent a success.
Choose the useful route
- Draw or arrange: Name two patches on a broad empty map and make a connecting mark. Let the child trace any comfortable part, or ask an adult to do so. A winding or straight route can work in this story; there is no shortest-path or line-neatness score.
- Tell, sign or point: Offer two imaginary destinations with clear names. Follow the child's chosen sequence, such as ‘around the room, then to the door’. Repeat only to check the agreed meaning. Stop if the child wants to change it; a route can stay partly described.
- Small start or no materials: Name one pretend move, such as ‘the visitor goes beside the tree’. The adult narrates that move and asks whether to keep it. If spatial words are not useful, use the child's established ‘here/there’ choices with clearly named locations.
Two ideas to borrow or change
- Delivery: The child makes a route from a pretend parcel room to a friend's imaginary door. The adult follows the selected path with a finger, then reports only that traced route; no real parcel delivery occurred.
- Ocean: The visitor travels around a drawn island to a sleeping bay. The child stops before reaching the bay and chooses to rest there instead. That changed destination can be the story, not an error to correct.
Notice, then choose the next move
Notice the chosen locations, representation and any actual pretend tracing or direction. Keep a plan, an enacted story and a real material test distinct.
Later, with or without this session: Make a new imaginary destination. Use the same map only if wanted; otherwise a spoken start works straight away.
More play, only if wanted: Offer a new fictional blocked patch and ask what might change. Label it as a new story condition, not something that happened during the earlier try.
Optional aid: A way through my place · exact text alternative
Adult intention: Represent a chosen route and connect it to a pretend purpose.
All starts · Parent guide · Play helper · Sources and limits
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