When I was a kid, I played a lot with cars, trucks, and a (very small) wooden train set we had. I didn't have a lot of interest in imitative play when it came to cooking/cleaning although baby dolls were acceptable.
The Thomas stories started out with a father telling stories to his 2 or 3 year old son who had the Measles and couldn't get out of bed or have the lights on. Rev. Awdry was a big train nerd, so he talked about something he and his son were both interested in... trains. A lot of the stories from the books were taken from events that actually happened.
Both the books/tv show Thomas trains and the imitative play that Niko does assigns personalities to the trains. The trains have likes and dislikes, motivations, opinions, have good days and bad days, are afraid of some things. If Niko didn't have trains, two things would happen: he would continue lining up blocks, shoes, etc to make his own trains, and he would apply those likes and dislikes, motivations, etc to something else like cars or GI Joes or something.
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Date: 2011-08-22 04:03 pm (UTC)The Thomas stories started out with a father telling stories to his 2 or 3 year old son who had the Measles and couldn't get out of bed or have the lights on. Rev. Awdry was a big train nerd, so he talked about something he and his son were both interested in... trains. A lot of the stories from the books were taken from events that actually happened.
Both the books/tv show Thomas trains and the imitative play that Niko does assigns personalities to the trains. The trains have likes and dislikes, motivations, opinions, have good days and bad days, are afraid of some things. If Niko didn't have trains, two things would happen: he would continue lining up blocks, shoes, etc to make his own trains, and he would apply those likes and dislikes, motivations, etc to something else like cars or GI Joes or something.