Dramatic play for preschool

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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Ultimate List of Dramatic Play Ideas for Preschoolers

Do you need dramatic play ideas to spice up your pretend play area? If your play pretend play area needs a refresh, you’re in the right place!

Dramatic Play Ideas for Preschoolers

Pretend play is one of the most effective ways to help young children learn important academic skills in preschool. Setting up your dramatic play center as a basic home-living or housekeeping center is a great way to get started. But if you really want to engage and motivate your little learners, then you’ll want to try out some of these creative dramatic play ideas to give your center a makeover.

Why is Dramatic Play Important

There are so many social, emotional, and academic benefits young children learn when they’re engaged in dramatic play. Here are just some of those benefits:

Attention Spans — Have you ever noticed that your kids can’t seem to sit and listen to a story for very long, but they could play forever in the dramatic play center? It turns out, when they’re given uninterrupted chunks of time to play, your kids are developing increased attention spans.
Oral Language — Young children talk to each other in the dramatic play center, talking to their peers freely helps them develop critical vocabulary skills. When they talk to each other they’re practicing both receptive and expressive language skills, which both have a direct relationship to future reading success.
Self-Regulation — Concepts like sharing and taking turns are important life skills that can be learned while engaging in daily dramatic play experiences

Dramatic Play Themes for Preschool

Apple Orchard Dramatic Play Center
Picking apples has never been so much fun! Your kids will have a blast picking apples and so much more in this adorable apple orchard dramatic play center.

Baby Nursery
Do your kids have younger sisters or brothers at home? Are they fascinated with babies? A baby doll nursery is perfect for any time of the year because it’s meaningful to all young children. They have a natural fascination with babies, which makes this baby nursery dramatic play center even more fun and engaging!

Bakery Dramatic Play Ideas
Setting up a bakery is during any time of the year, but can be especially fun around the holidays. During the holidays, baking may be taking place in homes and children may be tasting lots of yummy holiday treats – making this bakery dramatic play theme even more meaningful.

Birthday Party Dramatic Play Theme
It’s no secret that young children are obsessed with their birthdays! Your kids will have a blast pretending it’s their birthday with this super fun birthday dramatic play center.

Camping Dramatic Play Ideas
Camping is a unique and fascinating dramatic play theme for young children. What could be better than sleeping outdoors or cooking hot dogs and marshmallows over a fire? Your kids are sure to love this camping dramatic play theme.

Car Repair Shop
Your little mechanics will love fixing and repairing cars in the car repair shop dramatic play center.

Best Dramatic Play Themes

Dinosaur Dig Dramatic Play Center
Do you have any little dinosaur lovers in your classroom? Your kids will love learning about paleontologists and dinosaurs with this educational and fun dinosaur dramatic play center.

Doctor’s Office Dramatic Play Ideas
Most young children can relate to being sick and going to the doctor’s office. Use this familiarity to create a fun and educational doctor’s office dramatic play center your kids will love.

Fire Station
Putting out fires and responding to emergency calls will be the highlight of your student’s year in this fire station dramatic play center.

Flower Shop Dramatic Play Theme
Flowers are given for many different occasions such as; birthdays, anniversaries, graduation, weddings, Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day and more. Your little florists will love arranging, wrapping, and delivering flowers for special occasions with this flower shop dramatic play center.

Garden and Farmer’s Market
Turn your dramatic play center into a garden or a farmer’s market in the spring. This farmer’s market dramatic play center is the perfect addition to your spring or farm theme!

Dramatic Play Prop Boxes

Grocery Store Dramatic Play Center
All young children can relate to going to the grocery store. This familiar experience can be used to create an educational and super fun grocery store dramatic play center.

Dramatic Play Theme Ideas

North Pole Wrapping Station
Need a dramatic play center for a holiday theme? Your kids will love writing Christmas cards, and selecting and wrapping gifts in this fun North Pole dramatic play center.

Hot Chocolate Dramatic Play Center
Need a dramatic play idea for your winter theme? This hot chocolate dramatic play center will have your little baristas making and serving hot chocolate, and learning important academic skills while doing so!

Hair Salon
Hear me out, I promise I’m not crazy! Your little barbers and stylists will learn many important academic skills while working in this hair salon dramatic play center. They’ll love styling the hair on doll heads instead of cutting their own.

Ice Cream Shop
Need a fun dramatic play theme for the end of the school year or summer? Look no further, this ice cream shop dramatic play center is packed full of educational opportunities disguised under mounts of pretend sprinkles and whipped cream.

Pizza Parlor
What toppings would you like on your pizza? Your kids will have so much fun taking orders, making, and delivering pizza with this pizza shop dramatic play theme.

Post Office
It’s true, most adults don’t look forward to going to the post office, but it can be a fun experience for little kids. Your little mail carriers will have a blast addressing packages, mailing postcards, and delivering mail with this post office dramatic play center.

Dramatic Play Prop Boxes

Pumpkin Patch
The pumpkin patch is always fun for young children. There are hay rides, special treats, and pumpkins to pick! What’s not to like about this super fun pumpkin patch dramatic play center?

Restaurant
Breakfast and lunch are served! Your students will adore taking orders and serving customers in this restaurant dramatic play center.

Sandwich Shop
Your little learners will love ordering and making sandwiches in this sandwich shop dramatic play center!

Space Center
A space station dramatic play center offers many opportunities for your students to experience math, literacy, science, and STEM in fun and meaningful ways. Your little astronauts will love playing and learning in their very own space station!

Taco Stand
Make every day Taco Tuesday in your classroom with this super fun taco stand dramatic play center!

Vet Clinic
Your kids will love taking care of their pretend pets and making them feel better in their very own vet clinic dramatic play center.

More Dramatic Play Ideas

How to choose a performance for a child

Going to the theater with a child should be a memorable and bright event. Provided that the setting is chosen correctly, it corresponds to the age of the child and his interests.

In this article, the specialists of the Experimental Music and Drama Theater have collected recommendations on how to choose a performance for children of different ages.

We take into account the age of the child

When choosing a performance, it is necessary to take into account the age of a small or young spectator. Only in this way will it be possible to choose a production that will surely interest your child and give him positive emotions.

Choosing a performance for children under 3 years old

At the age of three, children only get to know the world around them - its colors, sounds. They really want to touch everything. Features of the development of babies are taken into account in theaters for the smallest. The main emphasis is not on the plot, but on emotions, the possibility of contact.

Please note! Performances for kids are held in small rooms with a limited number of spectators. This is done so that the children are not afraid of the influx of people.

During the performances, small spectators are allowed to move around the hall, touch the props. There are no strict restrictions.

If we talk about the themes of performances, then these are simple but informative performances. Performances based on well-known fairy tales are also widespread:

• "Kolobok";
• Ryaba Hen;
• Masha and the Bear;
• and others.

Keeping babies' attention is very difficult. Plus, they get tired quickly. Therefore, the performances are short.

Tip! When making your choice, be sure to consider where exactly the theater is located. A long road, several transfers on public transport and other inconveniences are unlikely to give a good mood to your baby. Impressions from going to the temple of art will be blurry.

Performances for children from 3 to 6 years old

Children at this age are able to concentrate, follow the plot, understand and explain the behavior of the characters in a fairy tale.

Please note! For children from 3 to 6 years old, a good choice would be performances that are easy to understand, but which tell about the rules of behavior or how to make the right choice in a given situation.

Popular productions include the following famous fairy tales:

• Puss in Boots;
• Pinocchio;
• Little Red Riding Hood and others.

Performances based on modern well-known cartoons are popular. For example, about the puppy patrol.

By the way! If your child likes to listen to children's poems, you can safely go to a poetry production.

Quite often performances for children from 3 to 6 years old are interactive. That is, small spectators can be involved in the performance.

The experimental musical drama theater has performances for children of different ages in its repertoire. If your child is over 3 years old, choose "The Wizard of the Emerald City" and others! During the New Year holidays, the production of "Santa Claus" is relevant.

Ages 6-11: Dive into the Story

As children reach elementary school age, more complex productions are well received. It doesn’t really matter what the plot is about, but it is important that it be interesting, intense and hold attention until the end.

Usually a child from 6 to 11 years old likes performances on the following topics:

• magical adventures;
• travel;
• princes and princesses;
• brave heroes, etc.

By the way! Usually children are most sympathetic to heroes of the same age as them.

Experimental Music and Drama Theater offers a wide range of performances for children of this age. For example, on New Year's Eve, the Snow Queen enjoys constant success. Do not go unnoticed and "The Adventures of Pinocchio". The musical and dramatic production of "Mary Poppins will return" will give a lot of positive.

Performances for children from 11 to 15 years old

Often, by this age, children are already familiar with theatrical art. Feel free to experiment by inviting your child to visit:

• musical;
• ballet;
• or an operetta.

By the way! But classical opera should be abandoned. The child will be bored there. He is not yet able to fully appreciate this high art. Probably, such an early trip will generally discourage him from attending the opera in the future.

The thematic direction of the performance can be anything. However, we strongly recommend that you focus on productions based on well-known classical works. Ideally - which the child has already studied at school. Among them is "Pygmalion", presented in the repertoire of our theater.

What else should be taken into account when choosing a play

If your child is mobile and active, we do not recommend choosing performances with a measured plot. It is likely that the child will simply get bored and will not even endure an hour and a half performance with an intermission. For such children, the following performances are perfect:

• short;
• with a dynamic and even slightly intricate plot;
• with many actors.

By the way! The best option would be a performance based on your favorite fairy tale or cartoon.

Puppet shows are definitely not suitable for active kids. They are often measured. But phlegmatic and shy kids will definitely like it. After all, interactive performances can become a source of stress for them. Moreover, they prefer to simply observe what is happening, mentally immersing themselves in the process, but not participating in it.

To sum it up

Theaters offer a wide range of plays and performances for children of all ages. When making the final choice, be sure to consider the following factors:

• baby's age;
• individual features of development;
• tastes and preferences;
• setting duration.

After visiting the theater, discuss the play with your child and share your impressions. Find out what he liked the most, which actions of the characters were good and which were bad. Then every trip to the temple of art will give a lot of positive!

12 performances for children and teenagers about adults who return to childhood - Afisha-Theaters look at each other, or even understand, or at least be surprised at their simultaneous similarity and difference.

• Forgotten Christmas

  Total Recall

  The action in the shadow theater takes place on the screen, modern gadgets are also valuable for their screens, with the help of which scientists can work (which happens on the stage), and children learn and have fun. The new performance of the Moscow Children's Shadow Theater combines tradition and experiment: the action of Kuprin's little-known fairy tale about a prince who has lost his memory has been moved to the present day. Young viewers peer into the visuals (and it contains, among other things, elements of memes and computer games), and adults listen to their father's monologue, emotionally performed by Viktor Scriabin, about the principles of education, internally agree or argue.

  More about the performance

• Uhti-tukhti and company

  Moscow Puppet Theatre, April 8 at 16:00

  Pismovnik

  Heroes of Beatrix Potter's fairy tales - charming and somewhat hedgehog-like in this performance from envelopes in the form of drawings along with the texts of adventures. Therefore, the dolls, lovingly invented by the artist Evgenia Shakhotko, are flat, as if illustrations in a worthy folio. To make them come to life, a girl in a leather suit and a helmet enters her childhood home, where no one has lived for a long time. All this time, adult Lucy wrote letters here, knowing that only she could read them herself, taking them out of an overflowing mailbox.

  More about the performance

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• The Snow Queen

  What remains of the fairy tale later

  Gerda saved Kai, and they began to live happily ever after? Kai has become a young man, but is still trying to understand how the fragile Gerda withstood such severe trials in order to take him away from the distant ice kingdom. To do this, he made a paper theater with his own hands in order to play out the adventures of a fearless girl again and again. And one cannot do without the complicity of the audience: only in confidential communication can one understand why Gerda was helped without fail by everyone without exception.

  More about the performance

• When I was a little boy

  Cook Lab theater laboratory on Smolenskaya, May 13 at 16:00

  Chamber performance about important things

  the performance will not mislead you, their goal is just to parody the clichés of bad theater for children, and the production itself is dedicated to the Dutch actor and storyteller Ray Nusselein. Two actresses will talk with children about the main thing - about a tear and a smile, and even about death. As they understood it in childhood. But the ending, of course, is life-affirming, because tears can be very different - from fast cycling, for example.

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• Memory of the war

  The boy grew up, was in the war and is now returning home: the scene is filled with belongings from the back of a huge truck. He returns to remember another war: how the faithful and faithful mongoose Rikki-Tikki-Tavi saved himself and his family from the insidious cobras. The staging by Alexei German and Svetlana Karmalita could not be just a fairy tale about animals. In the play directed by Vladimir Bogatyrev, there is no emphasis on paws, ponytails and ears, the director, following the authors, peers into a person capable of a feat, but also fully knowing what fear is. And animals are a great metaphor.

  More about the performance

• Adventures of Dunno and his friends in a balloon

  Flights in a dream and in reality

  The performance is not about the usual moving little men in huge hats and bright makeup, but measured middle-aged people. These are Znayka's memories of the journey and the crash. Children will rejoice at the funny slamming doors and medical treatment, while adults will appreciate the precise branded acting performances of the Near Stanislavsky House Theater. For performers, Nosov's witty text is also an occasion to talk about women who, under the white coat of a medical worker, wear an elegant dress just in case, and about men who can appreciate this act.

  More about the performance

• Peter Pan

  ROSTA Theatre, April 15 and 16

  Art heals

  The name of Alexei Frandetti is a sign of quality on the playbill of the musical, including on the stage of the drama theater. The director sets the action in Scotland during the Second World War, wounded soldiers in the hospital read a fairy tale by James Barry and find themselves in its wonderful world, like boys who ran away from home. And the music of several composers sounds in it in a live performance, written in the so-called "grand style", worthy of the big Soviet musical films.

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• Manyunya

  RAMT, March - June

  Armenian radio tells a children's anecdote

  Director Ruzanna Movsesyan defines the genre of his performance as a "declaration of love". She loves a happy childhood with kind relatives and innocent adventures, a simple, somewhat old-fashioned theater with its rich colors of scenery and ironic acting, and, of course, the source of her inspiration is the popular book by Narine Abgaryan. Anna Dvorzhetskaya appears at the beginning as a writer in front of a closed curtain to once again plunge headlong into the carefree world of cute pranks.

  More about the performance

• Carroll without Alice

  Moscow Puppet Theatre, March 30 at 19:00

  I hear a voice from a beautiful far away

  A well-coordinated duet of actors plays the story of Shaka, not Shaka, Ivan Fedoseev and Alexander writing, without changing a word in the well-known source. Serious mathematics professor Charles Lutwidge Dodgson comes to the doctor, and meets with his own childhood, which, as expected, famously hooligans and can piss him off. On the face of it, this is very funny. Parents of teenage viewers, thanks to musical motives, will also remember another Alice, from the cinema of their childhood, after watching which everyone swore that they would “become cleaner and kinder.”

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• About my mother and about me

  Everything about her mother

  A table, two chairs and two actresses, children's drawings and an iron as a telephone - these are all the simple components of this performance about problems schoolgirl and her relationship with the outside world, including her mother. The most important thing here is in the detailed and ironic acting and in the text of the play by Elena Isaeva, full, in spite of everything, of lyrics and optimism.
  

  More about the performance

• My dad is Peter Pan

  High School of Performing Arts, March - May

  Modern Syndrome

  It happens: dad behaves rather irresponsibly, sometimes he just disappears for a while. The thing is that he is a real Peter Pan. Or so he presents himself. “Boy, After Time,” as the protagonist in Keren Klimowski’s controversial contemporary play, is named, is always close to his past – in “Satyricon” he is played by an actress in a white suit with ears and a ponytail. To understand and forgive is not only a stand-up meme, but also a great spiritual work, which the popular theater speaks about in the language of contemporary art.

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• The Hoffmann effect

  Tricksters at work

  Hoffmann is accompanied by a young double. Doubles are his theme in general, both in life and in fairy tales. Yana Tumina puts on visual philosophical performances in which reality is indistinguishable from fantasy and each viewer is free to build their own associations to what is happening on stage. Here the atmosphere is more important than the biography of the title character. Hoffmann composed the enchanted Nutcracker Prince and the revived doll Olympia, who enter the stage in the company of the author himself, who multiplies on the stage along with strangers, puppets, strange objects and other tricksters.

  More about the play

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Events

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Zhukovsky0030
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• carpets,
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• Kopeisk, 900
• Korolev,
• Korolev,
• Korolev.

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