Dramatic play activity

This classic dramatic play center is another favorite. Set up a hospital with a triage cot, doctor costumes and lots of props. No explanation is needed! This is one of the centers (like the grocery store and the restaurant) that the children are usually very familiar with. They love to be called “Doctor”! Click HERE for more pictures of the set-up.

Hot Drink Cafe – Dramatic Play Center

Warm up with a mug of hot chocolate and a fresh pastry at the “Star Drinks” hot drink cafe. Click HERE to see lots of photo inspiration.

Ice Cream Parlor – Dramatic Play Center

Chocolate and mint ice cream with cherries on top… coming right up! Preschoolers love to scoop and sell this summer treat to their friends. Click HERE to see more pictures.

Do your students love to reread the books that you share with them in class? Set your dramatic play area up as a Library. Allow them to “check out” books with their very own library card and return them to school the next day.

Pancake and Waffle

What’s for breakfast?! Add the pancake and waffle sets (available HERE and HERE from Melissa & Doug) to the kitchen and fire up the grill. Children will love the custom menus and all of the toppings for their delicious breakfast.

Make a brick oven from a cardboard box and a roll of “brick” wrapping paper. Preschoolers will make pizzas, and order pizzas, and deliver pizzas, and pretend to eat pizzas ALL.DAY.LONG! Click HERE to see all the photos.

Post Office – Dramatic Play Center

Invite children to write letters to the parents or grandparents, to make cards for their classmates, and to deliver the mail at the Post Office Dramatic Play Center. Click HERE to see lots of pictures.

Can we take your order? The restaurant dramatic play center is chock full of opportunities to practice reading, writing, and teamwork. Click HERE to see the menu and order forms that are perfect for emergent readers.

Sandwich Shop – Dramatic Play Center

Switch the general restaurant into a fast-food sandwich shop. With this dramatic play idea, students will follow the menu board from left to right to choose the bread, protein, vegetables, and toppings for their very own sandwich.

Would you like a taco or a burrito from this very popular Taco Stand? Preschoolers will take your order then create the taco or burrito of your choice. What a way to “spice” up the dramatic play center!

Vet Clinic – Dramatic Play Center

While you’re learning about zoo animals, pets, or even the farm, this dramatic play Vet Clinic is a great way to engage children in pretend play. They will care for the animals and become veterinarians, x-ray technicians, and nurses.

Transformed trifold science boards into a straw house, a stick house and a brick house for an adorable version of the Three Little Pigs. Preschoolers who can memorize and act out stories will have great comprehension skills when they get to school. It’s also fun act out Goldilocks and the Three Billy Goats Gruff.

Whether you’re setting up a plain restaurant, a pizza parlor, an ice cream shop, or a taco stand, here’s a surefire FUN way to spice it up. Add a drink machine! You can use a box or a bookshelf with just a few simple additions (paper cups and tissue paper) to make it extraordinary. Click HERE for more details.

If you’re looking for a quick set-up, cheap center, this is it! Get all the supplies from the dollar store and added water. It’s great for summer, too. Take those kids outside and put them to work! Sometimes the best dramatic play ideas are the simplest.

Put on paleontology hats and look for dinosaur bones and footprints at this dramatic play dig site. Click HERE to see how to use a simple ingredient from the craft store to turn the sensory table into an excavation site.

Do your kids like to pretend or role play? What is your favorite way to set it up? Whatever it is, have tons of fun playing and learning with your children today.

Be sure to follow this Dramatic Play Pinterest board for even more dramatic play ideas.

Follow Play to Learn Preschool’s board Dramatic Play Preschool on Pinterest.

All dramatic play idea printables are available HERE:

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25+ Dramatic Play Activities for Toddlers and Preschoolers

You are here: Home / Dramatic Play / 25+ Dramatic Play Activities for Toddlers and Preschoolers

June 9, 2018 by Sheryl Cooper

Inside: Providing dramatic play activities is a great way to engage toddlers and preschoolers in role playing. Social skills are strengthened as the children interact with one another, too!

Let’s hear it for play! These dramatic play ideas for toddlers and preschoolers are open ended and fun!

Pretend play is an important part of children’s development. They learn by imagining and doing. If you stand back and observe children involved in pretend play, they are often mimicking what they’ve seen adults do. We take all of this into consideration when planning what to place in our dramatic play area.

• How will it be meaningful?
• What props will work best?
• How should it be organized?

The dramatic play area is also a great place to build communication skills, also. Dialogue is created as children are part of the pretend play.

In this post I’ve selected over 25 different dramatic play activities that can be done anytime of the year.

Before I begin sharing this collection, it’s important for new teachers to know that they do not need to change out their dramatic play center with each theme. It takes time to build a collection of materials (see our favorites at the end of this post). You can easily keep your dramatic play area stocked with a few staples.

Flower Market (with Printables)

The Garden Shop (Pre-Kinders)

Pumpkin Stand

Apple Stand

Honeybee Stand (Planning Playtime)

Winter Bear Cave Dramatic Play

Post Office

Movie Theater (Research Parent)

Zoo Animals (Teaching Mama)

Veterinarian Office (with Printables)

Bird’s Nest (Creekside Learning)

What’s the Weather? (Pre-K Pages)

Space (Catch a Star Ideas)

Spaghetti Shop (Where Imagination Grows)

Pizzeria

Ice Cream Shop (Learning 4 Kids)

Chinese Restaurant (Pre-K Pages)

Bakery (Pre Kinders)

The Taco Bar (The Mama Workshop)

Donut Shop (Sara J Creations)

Doll Diaper Station (Happy Hooligans)

Our Babies (Teach Preschool)

Baby Nursery (Pre-K Pages)

Making Pancakes (The Imagination Tree)

Tea Party

Hair Salon (Pre-K Pages)

Pet Grooming Salon (Sunny Day Family)

Grocery Store (Paper and Glue)

Clothing Store (Pre-K Tweets)

You can find more dramatic play activities on my Pinterest board.

• Our Favorite Toddler Learning Centers and How to Set Them Up
• How to Set Up Preschool Learning Centers

• How to Set Up Learning Centers
• How to Handle Preschoolers Not Using Certain Centers
• Tips on Managing the Toddler and Preschool Block Center
• Putting Together Table Activities During Centers Time

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Filed Under: Dramatic Play, preschool, Toddlers Tagged With: dramatic play, preschool, printables, toddlers

About Sheryl Cooper

Sheryl Cooper is the founder of Teaching 2 and 3 Year Olds, a website full of activities for toddlers and preschoolers. She has been teaching this age group for over 20 years and loves to share her passion with teachers, parents, grandparents, and anyone with young children in their lives.

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Theatrical game. The development of theatrical and play activities in different age groups

Consultation for educators

Theatrical play in kindergarten.

Grigor Irina Mikhailovna, educator MADOU D / S No. 396, Perm

Today, the problem of preschool education and upbringing is being widely solved, the tasks facing teachers of preschool educational institutions are becoming more complicated. The task of introducing children to theatrical activities from early childhood, to all types of children's theater, remains very important, which, of course, will help improve the culture of the child, form a spiritually developed personality, and help activate creative potential.

The word "creativity" means - the creation of something new, the ability to search for and portray something of one's own. Theatrical activity is the most common type of children's creativity, it is understandable and close to the child. By participating in it, children get acquainted with the world around them through music, images, sounds, colors, and correctly posed questions make children think, analyze, draw conclusions and generalizations. Creativity helps to improve oneself in the spiritual sphere, one's speech, develop one's feelings and emotions. The preschooler has access to the inner activity of empathy, understanding the inner world of the character, this opens up prospects for the use of theatrical play in the moral development of children, the ability to relate oneself to positive and negative characters. Thanks to this, social feelings, an emotional attitude to actions and events are born. (L. S. Vygotsky, A. V. Zaporozhets, etc.)

Theatrical activities help to develop the interests and abilities of the child, contribute to the manifestation of curiosity, the assimilation of new information and new ways of acting, the development of associative thinking, require strong-willedness from the child character traits: purposefulness and determination, diligence, systematic work. Volitional regulation is revealed in the development of a sense of space (mise-en-scene) , movements (gesture, facial expressions, pantomime) when it is necessary to express the state of mind of the character. The child develops intuition, ingenuity and ingenuity, the ability to combine images, the ability to improvise. Frequent performances on stage in front of the audience contribute to the realization of the creative forces and spiritual needs of the child, emancipation and self-esteem. The alternation of the functions of the performer and the viewer, which the child constantly takes on, helps him to demonstrate his knowledge, skills, and imagination to his peers (A. V. Shchetkin) . Following the role and text of the theatrical game contributes to the formation of arbitrary behavior. Performing game tasks in the images of characters from fairy tales helps to master your body. Theatrical classes and performances teach you to notice and evaluate your own and others' mistakes. The meaning of the activity, emotionality and "vitality" of works of art have a significant impact on the behavior of the child (BM Teplov) .

Exercises for the development of speech, breathing and voice improve the child's speech apparatus. In the process of working on the expressiveness of the characters' replicas, their own statements, the child's vocabulary, her intonational mood, is imperceptibly activated. The role played, the remarks made put the child in front of the need to express himself clearly, understandably and clearly. Preschool age is a sensitive period of speech development. By the age of five, the child masters phonetics and the basics of the grammatical structure of speech, he has formed a sufficient supply of active and passive vocabulary. Dialogic and monologue speech is improved in children of this age. A child of the sixth year of life is able to maintain a relaxed conversation, ask questions and answer questions correctly himself. It is at this age that the ability to coherently, consistently retell small literary works without the help of an adult develops, independently compose stories according to a plan, model, and retell what they read. The period of childhood from 5 to 7 years is the period of children's word creation. Therefore, it is advisable to begin the formation of a creative personality by means of theatrical activity precisely at the senior preschool age. Theatrical activities with preschoolers develop not only the mental functions of the child's personality, his artistic abilities, creativity, but also the ability to interpersonal interaction, creativity in any field, help to adapt in society, to feel successful.

Creating a children's theater, we took into account the developmental and educational nature of theatrical activity, which determines the leading and methodological principles. Theatrical activity of preschoolers is based on the principles of developmental education, the methods and organization of which are based on the patterns of child development, while comfort must be taken into account. The child displays each of his inventions in the game, entering the image, he plays any role, trying to imitate what he saw and what interested him, receiving great emotional pleasure.

Theatrical game introduces children to literary, dramatic and theatrical art, children form an idea about the work of artists, director, theater artist, children begin to understand that the whole team works on any performance, and it brings joy to both creators and spectators. The theatrical game is also close to the story game. They have a common structure: concept, plot, content, game situation, role. But in a theatrical game, the plot is taken from works of art and a performance or dramatization is staged. The main feature of the theatrical game is the literary content and the presence of spectators. The creativity of children is manifested in the truthful portrayal of the character. To do this, you need to understand the character, his actions, feel his state, be able to analyze and evaluate the actions. And of course, the child cares about the result (how he played, audience reaction) . Cooperation with parents is very important here. It is necessary, as often as possible, to talk about the successes of the child, about his theatrical abilities. Involve parents in making decorations and costumes. The closer this cooperation is, the more parents get to know their children, their character traits, temperament, dreams and desires.

A special place in the development of children's creativity belongs to game-dramatization. One of the features of the game is its syncretism, which manifests itself in the relationship of various types of art and artistic and creative activity (musical, visual and artistic speech) . The role-playing behavior carried out by the child in the dramatization game gives him the opportunity to acquire the ability to control himself, self-confidence, directs the imagination into a creative direction. In the game-dramatization, the child, with the help of expressive means (intonation, facial expressions, pantomime) , creates an image, performs his own actions of playing the role.

In the director's game , the child acts as a fairy tale character, takes on the role of director, invents the mise-en-scenes himself, invents the text himself and plays the part. "Voicing" the character and commenting on the plot, the child uses different means of verbal expression. The predominant means of expression in these games are intonation and facial expressions. Director's games can be group games, everyone leads their toys in a common plot, while the experience of communication, coordination and cooperation is accumulated. It is the director's game, including such components as an imaginary situation, distribution of roles between toys, modeling of real social relations in a playful way, that is an earlier type of game than a role-playing game, since its organization does not require a high level of game communication (S. A. Kozlova, E. E. Kravtsova) .

Naturally, the development of theatrical and gaming activities in different age groups has its own characteristics.

In the younger groups children do not reproduce the text, but perform certain actions according to the model shown by the teacher. Such games - imitations activate the imagination of children, prepare them for an independent creative game. They are happy to transform into familiar animals, but they cannot yet develop and beat the plot. Interest in theatrical games develops in the process of watching the performances shown by the teacher. Children joyfully and emotionally accept them. The artistry and emotionality of the teacher is very important here. The smaller the child, the more expressive the game should be. Theatrical puppets are used in the classroom, in everyday communication, on their behalf, an adult praises, thanks the children, greets and says goodbye. Thus, due to the wordless game - improvisation to music, the game - improvisation according to the texts of short fairy tales, nursery rhymes and poems, role-playing dialogues of fairy tale heroes, dramatization of fragments of fairy tales about animals and play - dramatization with several characters, the game experience of children expands. In children of this age, the primary development of the director's theatrical game is noted (tabletop toy theatre, planar flannelograph, finger) . Gradually, children are included in the process of playful communication with theatrical puppets, children develop a desire to participate in playful dramatic miniatures.

Children's playing experience is enriched by developing special playing skills:

• Mastering the position of "spectator" - watch and listen to the end, thank the artists.
• Primary formation of the position "artist" (the ability to use some means of expression to convey the image of a character, his emotions, experiences; the ability to play with the character's actions with the help of a puppet)
• The ability to interact with other children, to play roles they like.

At middle age the child moves to a game oriented to the viewer, where not only the game is important, but also the result is important. The game becomes a means of self-expression, children learn to combine text and movement in the role, a sense of partnership develops. The most active children begin to dramatize the simplest fairy tales together with the teacher using a table theater, and with inactive children it is necessary to try to dramatize works with a small number of actions. First-person narratives are introduced with accompaniment of text, movements and music. Theatrical and gaming experience of children is expanded through games - dramatizations using several characters, games where children get acquainted with the work of adults, performances based on the works of domestic and foreign authors, table, puppet, finger theater. The content is based on game studies of a reproductive and improvised nature. Particular attention is paid to improvisation and creativity in the process of inventing a game.

Theatrical and play skills of children become more complicated:

• Further development of the position of "spectator" (show elements of spectator culture, positively evaluate the play of peers) .
• The ability to use the means of non-verbal and intonation expressiveness to convey the image of a character, the ability to control a doll or toy, conveying its gestures and movements.
• Primary assimilation of the position of "director", the ability to create a playing space on the plane of the table.
• Ability to master the qualities of a performance designer.
• The ability to positively interact with other participants in the game, to agree on the distribution of roles and be able to resolve conflict situations.

In the senior group children continue to improve their performing skills. To do this, it is necessary to organize excursions, observe the surroundings, conduct game exercises for the imagination, use mimic and pantomime studies in the work, include children in inventing and designing fairy tales and displaying all their emotions and experiences in visual activity. Children's games begin to have a contamination character, free construction of the plot. The center of the game is not only the "artist", but also the "director", "designer", "costume designer". In a new way, children are introduced to theatrical culture: acquaintance with the purpose of the theater, the activities of theater workers, types and genres of theatrical art. The theatrical and game experience is enriched even more. The texts for performances are becoming more complicated. Game - fantasy becomes the basis of the theatrical game, where literary and fantasy characters coexist.

Special skills are developed:

• "Spectator" becomes an assistant and adviser.
• "Artist" independently expresses his attitude to the character with the help of non-verbal and verbal means of expression.
• "Director" is able to realize his ideas independently.
• Children learn the simple skills of a dresser.

Preschool group. At this age, play - dramatization becomes a performance. Children play for the audience. This requires the entire stock of knowledge, skills and abilities acquired at different ages. For a better understanding of a literary work, it is necessary to consider illustrations for it and pay attention to the emotional state of the characters; select exercises for the development of attention and imagination; emotionally express the state of the character with the help of intonation, facial expressions, gestures and posing. To be able to tune yourself with the help of special exercises to perform upcoming actions, change facial expressions and posture when switching from one action to another. For this, it is necessary to use fairy tales rich in dialogues and dynamic replicas. This will enrich the speech of children with new expressive means. It is important to give children more freedom in actions, fantasies when imitating movements. Exercises with the use of pictograms, role-playing dialogues on illustrations, filmstrips are very effective. Such joint creative activity involves even insufficiently active children in the process of staging performances, thereby helping them overcome shyness and constraint.

Special skills are developed:

• "Spectator" becomes an assistant and adviser.
• "Artist" is able to express himself using the means of non-verbal, intonational and linguistic expressiveness, the ability to psychologically tune in to the performance of the upcoming action, quickly switch from one action to another, control his facial expressions, postures and gestures is developed.
• A "director-screenwriter" is able to realize his ideas on his own, come up with plots for the upcoming performance, coordinate their roles and dialogues with the artists, and organize the activities of other children.
• "Costume designer" is able to designate the place of the "stage" and "auditorium", select attributes and substitute items, costumes and details for costumes, make posters and invitations to the performance.

Methodical work in preschool educational institution:
| | in preschool | | , in DOW | in preschool |

Theatrical and play activity of children as a kind of artistic and speech activity

1. Theatrical and play activity of children as a kind of artistic and speech activity

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