Can you see my imagination?

My three-year-old loves imagination play. Her favourite activity is creating stories and role playing with little figures. Sometimes she invites me or her sister to play along, but she gets frustrated if we don’t do it right. A few days ago, when I was clearly playing the game all wrong, she looked at me and sighed and asked “Can you see my imagination, Mummy?”

Unfortunately, I can’t. All I can do is watch as she turns imagination into reality through a game. But her question got me thinking: what is imagination? And how did our brains develop to allow us to be so creative?

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How do we feel love?

Love is an emotion (or a strong feeling) that shows how much we like or enjoy someone or something. A person who feels love really, extremely, ever so much likes another person or an animal or a thing. For example, I love the people in my family and my cat and I also love singing!

Love is important because it keeps groups of people (like families) together and makes them want to look after each other.

But how do we feel it? What happens inside our bodies to make us feel love?

How can we speak?

I speak every day – to my family and friends, to the people I work with and to other people that I meet. Sometimes I use my voice to sing or hum or whisper or shout! My daughters and husband use their voices too; even Fishfingers the cat purrs and meows. As you might imagine, our house can become rather noisy!

Speaking is one of the ways that humans communicate with each other. But how do we do it? What happens inside our bodies to make sounds that other people can understand?

Why don’t grown-ups cry?

Crying is an emotional response and a way of communicating how we are feeling. Crying is usually a signal that something is wrong. People cry when they are hurt or in pain or when they feel sad, frustrated or angry. But sometimes, people cry when they feel very happy!

Why do we laugh?

Laughing isn’t something that we have to learn to do, it just comes naturally – even very young babies can laugh if they are tickled! It is a physical response, made by the same muscles that we use to breathe.

But why do we laugh? What is it for?