Kiddie tents are usually used by children as props or accessories in their imaginative, dramatic, or pretend playtime activities. Depending on the objective of the game, children can surely benefit a lot from these kinds of playtime accessories or props.

First is the development or enhancement of children’s psychomotor skills.

A kiddie tent provides enough covered area for playing. Children can crawl into their tent or even jump onto it. If they are old enough, they can assemble the tent themselves without additional parental support. All of these require excellent control of the muscles. It helps refine their control of gross- and fine-motor movements while at the same time enhancing their sense of visual-motor coordination and balance. Tying some of the knots in certain kids' tents can help enhance manual dexterity.

Secondly, being important tools for imaginative or pretend play, children's teepees can be excellent materials for enhancing children’s cognitive abilities. When children are given a large house-like structure made of canvas to play with, their imagination is greatly stimulated. They are able to harness other cognitive skills such as problem-solving, memory, cause-and-effect relationships, spatial reasoning, and counterfactual reasoning.

Imagination requires input from the kid’s memory, the things he or she may have learned either through experience or from school. These pieces of information are processed by the brain to come up with a what-if situation. This is one of the crucial elements of critical thinking and divergent problem-solving. This also helps in the identification of a variety of situations that are directly related to a single phenomenon. It helps foster curiosity which can further fuel the child’s critical-thinking processes.

Playing with kiddie tents also help children develop and enhance their planning skills. They have to try to identify the objective of their role play and what the different activities they need to do. This is an essential skill to master as it lays the foundation for scientific problem-solving where a problem is best solved using a set of objectives that are problem-oriented. Looking for solutions to accomplish the objectives will lead to the resolution of the problem. Role-playing allows children to start understanding the concept of careful planning and objective-setting. This is important when they grow up as adults especially when they go into business as well as other endeavors that require planning.

Third, imaginative playing with friends helps to encourage cooperation and negotiation. When role-playing, kids eventually have to talk and discuss among themselves who plays which role as well as the different actions that each one has to perform. This helps develop children’s social skills. If they have to use a tent and there are many of them, children learn to take turns and share the different playthings in the playhouse tent. The social interaction obtained from imaginative role-playing activities allows kids to learn empathy and consideration for the feelings of other children. They begin to understand the idea of proper behavior especially when they are in the real world.

Fourth, as a natural result of the increased social interaction playing with kiddie tents, children are also able to improve their language and communication skills. Pretend and imaginative play is a wonderful opportunity for children to use their very own vocabulary and language. They are able to use expressive language. Our role as parents is to help expand their vocabulary by paraphrasing what our kids have said during their pretend play. We can do this by using a more descriptive language which our kids will understand or by giving examples using expressive language.

Lastly, because children are able to express their thoughts and feelings through role-playing and imaginative playtime activities, we help enhance their self-esteem. We are giving them power and control over their pretend world and this can help enhance their creative abilities. They can create their very own storylines, decide what plots and twists go with their story, and develop the personality of their main character in the story. All of this can help enhance kids’ self-esteem by giving them the power to control their world. And if we show that we also enjoy and truly appreciate what our kids are doing, the more that we enhance their self-esteem.