Play and children are synonymous and it is the best tool for early learning. It enhances many skills in children and makes learning joyful. Play can take many different forms as children grow and learn. From time to time, children engage in many different kinds of play like creative, exploratory, constructive and Pretend Play. Pretend, dramatic, make believe, imaginative play is one of the essential kinds of play that children enjoy engaging in. It is a form of play that enhances language, creativity, communication, math, social and emotional skills in children.
Unfortunately, in today's early childhood classrooms we don't lay much stress on its importance. Play is often looked at something to be done at home rather than at school.
Play has changed over the years and there is no doubt that kids today seek more pleasure from video games or rather I pads than playing with peers. But old fashioned play is not just fun. It enhances skills like self regulation, control and language development. When children engage in pretend play they use a lot of private speech which is self regulating. Structured activities don't allow children to use such speech and hence don't give an opportunity to children to manage emotions or master social skills or solve problems.
So how do you set the stage for dramatic play, make it part of children's daily schedule and get them excited about? Just three simple steps:
Create an environment which invites kids to enact various roles. Set up an area in the class with various props but restrict giving children specific props to play. Allow multipurpose props that can be used to stand for many objects like boxes. They can turn into cars. trucks, refrigerators, rockets etc. Let children create their own props to make them feel more engaged.
Introduce and talk about various roles that people do in life. e.g. in a hospital, you would find doctors, nurses, receptionist, chemist, patients etc. When children are familiar with the various roles that people do in various settings, they would be more eager to enact such roles.
Allow children to plan their play. Of course the teacher will have to play an important role in this. She will have to discuss initially with children on the roles, theme and what will happen in the play. Initially one can divide children into groups to manage the dramatic play area and to ensure that even the shy ones get a turn. Plenty of time has to be given to children to fully explore the area and the materials.
With these few simple strategies you can give valuable and enriching experiences to children which would have a long lasting impact on them.
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