DRESS-UP AND PRETEND

A good way to gather costumes is to pick Halloween costumes they'd wear more than once or to hit up the Halloween shops and Walmart or Target just after Halloween to find really good deals on costumes.

Melissa and Doug are really a wonderful company for all things pretend, including year round costumes and puppets. The puppets are really detailed and cute.

Below are some fun dress-up ideas, by category.

Superheroes

Movies

Books

Children learn while pretending, especially at younger ages. Pretend play expands the imagination, teaches social, emotional, language, and thinking skills according to Scholastic.com. Dress-up, puppet shows, and just letting your kid's imagination run wild all work with this type of learning. As a parent, you should nurture this need for pretend play and learning. Scholastic and Trish Kuffner's Busy Books suggest keeping a prop box for your kids to keep costumes, tools, weapons, and other props so that they can have access to them whenever they'd like. You can also setup a dress-up closet (as pictured below). My boys love being able to browse through the rack to see who they want to be next!