House Update: Babies and Pets!
Since its launch last year, House, our doll-house style toy in the Playroom, has been a clear fan favourite. Fostering skills such as role play, sharing, patience, and planning this robust toy allows kids to empower their imaginations and explore the world of storytelling in a safe and calm environment.
Now, we’re adding new characters to this colourful world: Babies and Pets! With the addition of Babies, kids can explore what it’s like caring for the newest family member by changing dirty diapers, giving them a bubble bath, putting them down for a nap or walking them in the stroller. Kids can also bring home Pets and look after their new furry friends with accessories, food, unique crates and housing, further adding to their diverse and growing family.
Many of our players may be in the age range where they’re about to become older siblings. This update gives them the ability to practice how to care for others by interacting with the Babies and Pets in House. These interactions help set boundaries and prepare them emotionally for the new role in their lives. Alternatively, it also allows them to reverse the roles, and have a safe space to do silly things with a baby that they wouldn’t be able to do in real life. Doing so relieves some of the tension and excitement that comes with the anticipation of a new family member.
Alongside our new cast of characters, we’ve also updated our existing cast with new clothing, food and decorations, even adding new facial characteristics like wrinkles and birthmarks to certain characters to add more depth, variety, and representation to House. All together, we hope our newest update provides a more expansive and diverse environment for storytelling than ever before!
Why is storytelling so important?
Storytelling opens up worlds of possibility. It allows children to expand their understanding of the world around them and make sense of the things they see in everyday life.
With storytelling, there are no set rules or objectives. It can give kids a safe space to explore difficult subjects such as violence or even death. It also provides a chance to get silly and nonsensical. Through storytelling, kids have the freedom to craft worlds where anything can happen.
Research shows that storytelling assists the development of imagination, observation and children’s memory. It is one of the most important activities for the construction of literacy and introduces oral language patterns and enhances language abilities. Not only does storytelling foster skills through imaginative independent play, but it has the ability to build strong bonds between you and your child. By sharing your child’s sense or humour or using stories to bridge difficult subject matter, you’re creating connections and showing them that their thoughts and ideas are valid and valued.
As parents, our goal is to raise children with the flexibility and creativity to do well in jobs we can’t yet imagine. When children develop the ability to craft and share stories with family members, they are building skills such as creativity, language development, communication, social skills and confidence. These key components underpin every area of early childhood development and can ultimately set a child up for success.
We’re always so inspired by the way kids interact with Pok Pok and continue to play, learn and grow, and we can’t wait to hear what families like yours think of our newest update! We’d love to receive your feedback, see your play videos and hear your ideas — share your thoughts and say hello at hello@playpokpok.com.
Join our community to get insights from our educators and take a peek behind the scenes into our toy design process over on our Instagram!
