Pretend play is an important part of a child’s development. They learn by imagining, imitating and doing. If you observe children who are involved in pretend play, they are often mimicking what they have seen adults do. It’s pretending to be someone or something.
The dramatic play is a great place to build a child’s communication skills. Dialogues are created as children as they go on pretending.
It’s adorable to see children playing those games, witnessing their pretend play just gives parents immense joy and happiness. Dramatic play is actually important to your child’s development, supporting both intellectual and verbal skills.
Here are some examples for Dramatic Play:
Setting up a Bakery:
Children can bake and sell goodies at their very own Cookie Shop. Children love to have a kitchen set up and enact cooking/baking and later sell the products they have made. This helps them develop the ability to coordinate and plan with others as a team.
Puppet Theatre:
Preschoolers who can memorize and act out stories will have great comprehensive skills when they get to school. Using puppet, they also love to enact stories which they are familiar with. Adults cope with dramatic events by retelling it again and again. Children cope up by acting them out.
Grocery Store:
Ask your children to save and bring in all of their empty recycling containers, then use them to set up a grocery store. We can guarantee that it would be one of their favorites. Dramatic play is a safe place for children to act out real life situations.
Hospital:
One of the most favourite and classic dramatic play is the hospital setup. They like to set up a hospital with a cot, doctor costumes and lots of props. No explanation needed, this is one of the setups that children are usually very familiar with. They love it when we call them “Doctor”! It also encourages children to recognize various roles of people in their lives and communities.
Restaurant:
Can we take your order? The restaurant dramatic play is full of opportunities to practice reading, writing and teamwork. Children will enjoy a lot as they imitate what exactly happens at a restaurant. It would be really fun to watch children while they are repeating options on the menu and trying to take our order. They will interact with both print and numbers as they take orders, fill them and then ring up the total owed for the meal.
As we are aware, kids put on various hats on a day to day basis. Assuming these roles given them a lot of knowledge and learning about the community, its helpers and what role they would like to play in the future. Let us encourage young minds to explore all possibilities while they enagaging in dramatic play.
