encouraging imaginary play

Imaginary play is not my forte. I don't know if H&F just didn't fall far from my imagination-less tree, or if they would just generally rather do other things, so I try to encourage imaginary play but am always looking for more ideas. One thing that kept them both happily occupied for an hour recently (which is basically unheard of in our house!) is the creation of a small town. We have this really cute play rug from IKEA, which you would think would get lots of imaginary play time. However, it rarely does. This is basically the same idea as a play rug, but with kid input, and it can be recycled later and a new one made another time.

I helped get them started but they really took off with it and it was so nice to see them playing together so well and creating all these different scenarios for their animals, cars, and trains. There are gardens, houses, parks, parking lots, lakes and pools, an airport complete with a helicopter launchpad, some train tracks, a dinosaur island, and a strawberry lake, which has strawberries instead of water. With how many pounds of strawberries H&F consume each week, I am not surprised they would come up with a lake made entirely out of strawberries!