Little Buddy’s nursery gave us another Home Learning Environment (HLE) bag, this time themed “Construction + Role play”, which comprised of 5 wooden train track pieces, 3 train cars and 1 pig costume (what a weird combination).

Apparently role play/dressing up is one of Little Buddy’s interests, which was news to us. And we know he is a big fan of construction, since we have a box of Duplo and a wooden train set at home.

Our observations are below:

• He is much more interested in construction/trains than dressing up:
  • The train tracks, trains and dressing up outfit were laid out on the table, Aodren describes them: “This is zhu1 (“pig”, in mandarin)”, then “Train! train!” and “Train track” and proceeds to build the train tracks
• Aodren likes sharing and playing together, and is quite polite:
  • Gives me a train and says: “Mama train” and “One for you”
  • Once I take the offered train, he says “Thank you”
• But he is also quite possessive & has very definite ideas of ownership rights:
  • He says “My train”, when I try to swap my train for his
  • When I combine my train with his, he will remove my train and hand it back to me, and take the rest of his trains back and says: “My train”
• He is quite directive in his communication:
  • He directs me: “Mama sit”, and “Hold it”
  • When I took out my phone to take notes, he pushes my phone away and says: “Finish”
  • He says “Leave it there”, when I tried to move some thing off the table to make more space for train play
• He describes what he is doing as he plays, and his verbalisations include:
  • “Go there”, “Train go there”, “This pig”, “Train fall down”, “On track”, “Go this way, thank you”, “Aodren train there”
• He is independent-spirited and wants to do things himself whenever possible:
  • He struggled to get the trains in between the bridge rails (it was a tight fit), and accepted my help to get the trains it
  • But when one of the trains fell, and I help him pick it up, he says: “No, my na2” (“take”, in mandarin) – he takes the train from my hand, puts it back on the ground, then picks it up again
• He likes more complex construction:
  • He says “More track”, and takes pieces of loose tracks from our own/home train set, to combine with the HLE train set
• He is innovative and likes imaginative play – uses Transporting schema, likes “small world” play
  • Transports pieces of Duplo using the train cars from one end of the line to another (transports one piece to the end of the line, then removed that piece of Lego, replaces it with another piece, and transports it to the other end of the line)
  • Also transports human figures in the train (mummy and daddy each in one carriage)
  • Puts a small human figure on the side of the train track
• After a while, he asks to dress up, and he repeatedly puts the costume on & takes it off:
  • Initially, I help him put it on and take it off, but then he starts doing it himself
  • Finally, he plays with the train while wearing the costume
• After he gets bored of playing with the train, he asks for books.