Dramatic Play
DRAMATIC PLAY
Through dramatic play children learn about themselves and the world in which they live. These play experiences allow children to learn about their like and dislikes, interests, and abilities. Through play they are provided opportunity to make sense of what they observe on a daily basis and allows children to express ideas and feelings. Dramatic play involves more complex social and thinking skills needed to enhance communication and social skills.
Children cultivate social and emotional intelligence.
How we interact with others is key to our lifelong success
and happiness. Knowing how to read social cues,
recognize and regulate emotions, negotiate, and take turns,
and engage in a long-term activity that is mutually
beneficial are no easy tasks. There is no substitute for
creative and imaginative play when it comes
to teaching and enhancing these abilities in our children.
This is all part of our TOPP KIDS plan to develop our
children’s social and emotional development
throughout kindergarten and beyond.
IDEAS OF MATERIALS/OBJECTS TO COLLECT FOR DRAMATIC PLAY:
Old clothes, shoes, bags, hats, phones, cooking utensils, dishes, napkins, silk flowers, stuffed animals and dolls, fabric pieces, blankets, old sheets, pegs, postcards, plane tickets, coins from around the world, photos from different vacations.
DRAMATIC PLAY AREA IDEAS:
- Airport
- Post office
- Café
- Music shop
- Vets/Doctors
- Campsite
- Kitchen
- Construction site
- Store
- Classroom
- Garden
Writing materials should always be available in all areas!
OTHER WAYS TO INITIATE DRAMATIC PLAY:
- Use a story, invite the children to recreate a favourite story, to extend this you can ask questions that provide a twist.
- Provide dolls and puppets, these could be sock puppets that the children have made themselves, give the opportunity to ascribe their feelings and ideas, express and explore.
- Create ‘prop boxes’, provide a few props that link with a theme to initiate the children’s imagination
and then let their creativity flow. - Make time, uninterrupted time to play and explore. Allow children to leave a set up that they can return to fully explore and enhance their creative explorations.
SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL
When children are given the opportunities to engage in pretend (dramatic) play, they are actively experimenting with the social and emotional roles of life. When a child pretends to be someone else, they gain the experience of ‘walking in someone else’s shoes’ which helps them to gain an understanding in the moral skill of empathy. Through cooperative play with their peers, they will also learn the skill of taking turns, sharing responsibility, creative problem solving and understanding other’s feelings.
LANGUAGE
Dramatic play helps a child understand the power of language, they will often share a reflection of their parents or people in their life. Cooperative play with peers will also teach new words that can used to re-enact a story or create a play, enabling connections between written and spoken language, this all helps in building a skill that will help learn to read.
THINKING SKILLS
Dramatic play provides children to build on their cognitive thinking skills and develop their problem solving, whether it is deciding what to use in their play or what role they want to play.