In this episode, we explore the importance of dolls houses and how they can be used to teach children about different cultures.
Dollhouse play is a fun activity for children. It allows them to explore their creativity and have the freedom to create without being restricted by rules or limitations.
What makes playing with dollhouses so special? And what is the key to their lasting popularity? We’ll look at the psychology of children’s play and how it influences which doll’s homes are the best in this guide.
In this tutorial, you’ll discover about the psychology of doll’s home play and why it’s important.
What exactly are doll’s homes, and why are they so essential to kids?
Dollhouses have been a part of children’s play for hundreds of years, but it’s fair to believe that youngsters were playing out familiar scenarios from their lives with objects on a tiny, child-size scale long before then. Toy-like figurines going back to prehistory have been discovered by archaeologists. It’s obvious that it’s a fundamental need.
Why have tiny copies of our houses and other familiar places become such a popular part of our kids’ play? What is it about a tiny replica of a bedroom suite or a kitchen table that fascinates and engages young children? And, in today’s world, when our families and lives are changing so quickly, does the classic doll’s home still have a place?
The basic answer is that doll’s homes, regardless of its design or arrangement, provide youngsters with a secure and insignificant environment in which to explore and play out real-life problems and experiences. This includes not just unpleasant or stressful circumstances (such as a scolding parent or a frightening dog nipping at the postman’s heels), but also joyous or wished-for events (weddings, birthday celebrations, Christmas) and, most often, daily encounters (cooking tea, putting children to bed, watching television by the fire.) Simply said, children use dollhouses to prepare for real life, to get a better understanding of the world around them, and to harness a very fundamental human urge to learn and, eventually, to survive.
There are doll’s homes and then there are doll’s houses, just as there are doll’s houses and then there are doll’s houses. Many of the ones available now are highly gendered in favor of girls, to the point that males are either excluded from or uninterested in doll’s home play. Given the opportunity and support to explore doll’s homes, however, they may be just as gratifying, interesting, and essential for males.
In this article, we’ll look at the many kinds of doll’s homes on the market, as well as the advantages of doll’s house play for both boys and girls, and how to guarantee an inclusive approach. We’ll also look at the many sorts of doll’s home furnishings, as well as the kind of figures and families that function well in a doll’s house. Finally, we’ll look at how you may continue to expand and enhance your child’s doll home play over time.
The advantages of playing with dolls’ houses
Playing with a doll’s home has many advantages for children, ranging from the development of fine motor skills and concepts of categorization and materials to the development of social skills and emotional intelligence. A doll’s home is one of the most durable and therefore cost-effective toys you can purchase, and it’s no surprise that many are passed down down the generations. If you are fortunate enough to have inherited a “heirloom,” you may update the home by purchasing new furnishings and figurines. We’ll go over some of the developmental advantages of playing with a doll’s home in this article.
Social abilities
A doll’s home is one of the few toys that allows two children to sit next to each other and play together, rather than opposite each other or in a group. If it’s a largeish home, they’ll have enough of space in front of them to share without having to fight about who gets to play with the couch and who gets the bed. Children may learn to play collaboratively and become aware of their classmates’ behavior in a pleasant and easy manner this way. It’s also a fantastic method for ideas and tales to grow without the strain of a critical eye on them. It’s the same principles at work if you’ve ever observed how discussions appear to thrive in the vehicle; the dialogue and exchange of ideas is free to develop. Children who play together with dolls homes are more likely to know how to share and get along with their classmates.
Emotional intelligence is a term that refers to the ability to
Children can better comprehend their family and the world around them by acting out tales and situations they experience in daily life. Children may discover characters and personalities via their play figures and the dramas that develop between them, even if the ‘family’ in the doll’s home is made up of mice or rabbits. Children may weave common aspects of daily life into a fantasy story that they can influence through doll’s home play.
On the doll’s home size, large themes and strong ideas and feelings may be handled more readily, providing this kind of play a therapeutic edge. It also enables youngsters to comprehend their family’s power dynamics: who is in control and what the repercussions are for poor behavior. It also gives youngsters the opportunity to practice being the adult and reprimanding disobedient children. Frequently, their penalties are worse than those imposed by their parents!
At One Hundred Toys, we speak a lot about schemas, but there are also schemas for relationships and interactions (and everything else). We’ve all created mental models for how to respond to certain situations, such as an angry person, a pleasant person, a pet, and so on. All of this is based on real-life events and is constantly rehearsed in doll’s home play. Doll’s homes allow youngsters to simplify interactions to their most basic forms and then repeat them again and over until they comprehend them.
Being aware of your surroundings
Without the guidance of parents or family norms, youngsters are free to make their own mess or order. Arranging furniture, figuring out that the bed won’t go down the stairs or that the couch won’t fit in the bathroom, is another method of grasping volume and the relative locations of things in space. Just because you can cram the fridge into the space behind the kitchen table doesn’t mean it’ll work if you can’t open the door.
Classification
Sorting entails determining which pieces of furniture go where. Children learn that there are many different ways to categorize things, and a doll’s home is the ideal place to try out their theories. Should all of the youngsters be in one room while the grownups are in another? Should the plates be kept in the kitchen or in the dining room? There is no such thing as a correct response. What matters is that we recognize that we need criteria to sort by.
Choosing between aesthetics
Children learn the importance of design from us, and they have an inherent sense of beauty and visual harmony. In a doll’s home, there are lots of textures and materials that mirror those children experience in real life, especially if you opt for more realistic and lifelike furnishings. They notice the weave of the cloth and the seams in the wallpaper in the fur rug, the metal bedstead, and the drapes in the bedroom.
Encourages creative and open-ended play.
There’s only one method to finish a problem, and there’s little need to try it again after you’ve finished it. A doll’s home, on the other hand, is a toy that may be played with indefinitely. There are no set rules, and the game may go in whatever way it wants. This is a scaled-down form of creative or role-playing that may be abandoned and returned to many times since it is confined inside the four walls of the doll’s home. While your kid is eating breakfast downstairs, they may be planning how they will re-enact this meal when they return to the doll’s home later.
Skills in fine motor movements
Playing with a doll’s home requires the application of fine motor skills. Delicacy, strength, and accuracy in their hands and grasp are required for placing furniture in the appropriate places, posing figures in the correct manner, and moving them around the areas in the home. Gross-motor abilities, as well as hand-eye co-ordination, are required if the home has moving components, such as a front that opens up and accessories to attach, such as fences and garden gates.
The various kinds of doll’s houses and how to select one
It’s difficult to select amongst the many various kinds of doll’s houses available. Whichever doll’s home you select, we suggest choosing one that allows figurines to travel from one area to another. If you have a front door that dolls can pass through, even a basic one-room home may function. Another intriguing feature is the ability to see through windows. A doll’s home allows youngsters to observe how figures move about the house from various perspectives, such as from the outside in and from several rooms at once.
They can view the whole narrative at once, including the infant in its crib in the bedroom, the mother in the garden, and the brother sneaking candy from the kitchen cabinet. They can see Daddy entering the kitchen from the living room, ready to catch the unwitting son stealing the candy. It’s a kind of interactive image that people can manipulate. We’ve outlined the various designs to assist you in determining which doll’s home is ideal for your kid.
Doll’s home that is small and movable
Many modern, especially Scandinavian, doll’s homes are simple and stripped down in design, with little or no decoration or painted colors that could genderize the toy. This kind of contemporary doll’s house allows your kid to utilize their imagination to its full potential; it may be a home one day, a hospital the next, or a bustling department shop the next. And if it’s a portable doll’s house, it’ll probably have a smaller footprint than most, allowing you to take it with you on your trips or move it about your house with ease.
Traditional doll’s home made of wood
A classic wooden doll’s house is similar to a normal family home in that it has several stories and distinct rooms. (Stairs are a popular feature among youngsters, who like moving their figures up and down them.) On the outside, there’s typically some sort of color or painting to indicate conventional elements like bricks and window sills, door frames, and gates, but it shouldn’t be too prescriptive or in blatantly gendered colors. If furniture is provided, it represents the contemporary house and includes modern items such as a sofa bed in the spare room and a TV in the living room, as well as common kitchen appliances such as kettles and microwaves.
Doll’s home of grandeur
The big doll’s home typically has a Victorian feel to it, with elaborate outside design and three or four floors where family life takes place. While most of us aren’t acquainted with a magnificent home, it makes for a great setting for imagination and narrative. And if your actual surroundings are modest, this kind of doll’s home provides the polar opposite: a world completely under their control, whether it’s as simple as having a trampoline in the yard or more extravagant dreams like having a pet lion in the kitchen. It also means there are a lot of stairs, and kids enjoy moving their figures up and down the stairs. This allows them to fully immerse themselves in typical family rituals like putting the kids to bed upstairs or having a tea party in the dining room. If the front opens, it may also be used as a storage solution since it’s simple to shut the doors for the night without having to change or modify the settings inside.
Doll’s home miniature
A tiny doll’s home is a cross between a conventional and a portable doll’s house in that it is smaller than others but retains many of the traditional doll’s house’s characteristics.
Large windows provide a feeling of space and enable natural light to pour in on your family and furnishings, which is one of the finest aspects. With a cut-out attic and rooms with high ceilings, it is tiny yet manages to make the most of the available space. This kind of home is ideal for animal play figures such as Maileg mice and bunnies, which are less articulated than normal play figures and therefore have simpler motions and postures. As a result, it’s an ideal setting for storytelling, and it may serve as the setting for virtually any fairytale or bedtime story.
Furniture for a doll’s home
What sort of furnishings should you include in your dollhouse? There are no regulations at all! Many homes come with a basic collection of doll’s house furnishings. This is advantageous since it allows your kid to go right to the fun part of the game. The furniture will most likely mirror the house’s design and shape, making it seem comfortable and simple to work with.
If you’re buying dollhouse furniture or getting hand-me-downs from family or friends, a general rule of thumb is to look for pieces and accessories that kids recognize and that function – a chair with just three legs or a closet with no doors would be irritating and disappointing. Small things like cutlery, dishes, toys, and bedding will be more interesting to children if you can include more realistic features in them.
However, there is a lot of fun to be had with non-matching furniture and other non-regulation things that your kid may discover and utilize in their home. Children are experts at suspending disbelief, so although you may think the empty yoghurt pot they’re using as a hot tub in the attic doesn’t quite go in with the rest of the decor, rest assured it’s ideal for them.
Not all of the furniture (or the people, for that matter) needs to be to scale. The BBC’s In the Night Garden show employs a variety of scales to give the program a dreamy feel. The Ninky Nonk is small as it whizzes by the characters, but it grows in size afterwards. A doll’s home is no exception. Who cares if the doll’s bed is too large or the wardrobe comes from a much smaller home?
See also Moon and Me, which is set in a doll’s home and has a really bizarre cast of people. It wasn’t styled for Instagram, for sure! However, in the tale, all of the characters get along and live happily together. The fact that the girl lives with a sheep whose eyes are constantly closed and an onion clothed in pants does not appear odd.
To maximize the amount of fun you may have with your dolls, choose the appropriate ones
Which toy figurines are the finest for a doll’s house? In a doll’s home, how many people are required? And who are they supposed to be?
The dolls in the doll’s house, as you would assume, play an important part in the efficacy, enjoyment, and potential of doll’s house play. Your child’s household provides them with the opportunity to investigate and experiment with the power dynamics of the society they are growing up in. Who’s in control here? What is acceptable and inappropriate behavior? Where do particular family members spend the majority of their time, and why? What are the rituals, traditions, beliefs, and customs of your family? Young children may work through and grasp life’s laws and ideas via the people in their doll’s home.
So, which toy figurines are the finest for a doll’s house? There are no hard and fast rules, but having a range of play figures who can reside in your doll’s home, such as a mix of generations and relationships, is preferable than having four children. This enables your kid to experiment with many types of interactions (parent and child, parent and parent, siblings, children and pets, visitors to pets etc.) That isn’t to say you’ll need an army of dolls. One of each character will enough, and even one adult, a kid, and a dog will offer more play possibilities than three youngsters.
Dollhouses that aren’t what you’d expect
The One Hundred Toys philosophy is based on the concept that less is more; a doll’s home full of small pieces of furniture may seem to be at odds with our philosophy of fewer, better toys. And we firmly think that anybody can make their own doll’s home out of an old cardboard box or a set of blocks, and we enthusiastically urge you to do so. However, having a realistic-looking structure that you can picture living in is especially wonderful for youngsters.
A doll’s home is, in the end, simply another kind of small world play. A wooden castle, a tree home, or a garage may all be used to explore many of the themes covered in dollhouse play. Characters meeting one other and forming connections as they go up, down, in, and out. A genuine doll’s home, on the other hand, is very different. The house is a representation of the child’s actual home. They have the ability to re-enact events and relationships from their own life. A doll’s home brings the play to life in a way that a DIY version can’t match. That is what distinguishes a doll’s home from others.
A last comment about doll’s homes
A large doll’s home isn’t required. As long as it includes windows and a door, a basic one-room home will provide 90% of the play value. Stairs and linking doors, as well as a closing front, are all desirable features. The most essential thing is to have enough figures to keep things interesting and allow for a wide range of interactions.
Take another look at doll’s home play if you believe it’s too boring. There is perhaps no other toy with as much long-term play potential as the simple block. Children get fully absorbed in their tiny environment, which is beneficial to both them and us.
Dolls house play is a type of play that has been around for thousands of years. It’s important because it teaches children about the world and how to care for others.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is a dolls house so important?
A dolls house is a playhouse for children to use as a toy. It is often made from wood, cardboard or cloth and typically has small furniture such as beds, chairs, tables and even animals that the child can interact with.
Why is doll play important?
Doll play is important because it allows children to explore their identity and develop social skills. It also helps them understand that they are not alone in the world, which can be difficult for kids who have experienced abuse or neglect.
What do children learn from a dolls house?
Children learn that living in a doll house is like living in the real world.
