Beyond talking objects and making a game out of a chore, the field is wide open. Experiment with your silly side. Instead of just telling a child what to do in your regular voice, talk like a duck, or a sports announcer, or your child’s favorite cartoon character, or sing it with a country twang. Devise ways of leaving a friend’s house that involve avoiding lava, quicksand, or alligators. Instead of telling a classroom of preschoolers to sit still and be quiet, have them freeze like statues. Tell them they’re “as still as an iceberg,” or “as quiet as a little mouse hiding in the grass from a
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