Dramatic play with preschoolers

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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Drama games in preschool | Preschool education

Author: Tomilova Olga Viktorovna

Organization: GBDOU DS No. 67 comb. type of Vyborgsky district of St. Petersburg

Settlement: St. Petersburg

Dramatic play is a spontaneous amateur activity during which the child tests, clarifies and expands knowledge about the world and about himself. As they play, children reenact places and scenes they have seen in life, imitate the actions of family members, and assume the roles of various people they have met. They reproduce the world that they understand, or one that brings confusion and fear into their minds.

From early childhood, children imitate the sounds they hear and the actions they see. While enjoying pretend activities, children react to new situations with movement and voice. That's how they play. This game, if supported, develops into dramatization: an art form, a socializing activity and a way of mastering reality.

Creative dramatization and play, especially in young children, cannot be isolated or limited to a certain place and time. In a group, at home or in a public place, creative dramatization and play help the child develop responsibility, develop new interests and, especially in a group, absorb new knowledge.

Dramatization is one of the most personal and individual ways of learning. In creative dramatization, there are no performers who memorize roles and use accessories and costumes to influence the audience. In such creative activities, children spontaneously invent, act out and interpret familiar situations and themes for themselves. For example, they act out situations based on real or imaginary roles that they have come into contact with in life, such as going to the zoo. In dramatic play, children create their own world in which they master the real world. In this imaginary world, they try to solve real life problems. They repeat, play again, and relive their experiences. In this way, dramatic play helps the child develop from a purely egocentric being into a person who is able to interact with others.

Developmental Influence

In dramatic play, children often spontaneously take on the role or actions of someone else (pretend to put out a fire like firemen), use objects in a substitution function (sit on a building block while pretending to ride on a truck through the streets) and play out familiar situations (going to the market or grocery store). For a rich and meaningful preschooler, this is the ideal arena for emotionally rich and meaningful learning. Dramatic play develops the child in every way. If the educator correctly organizes the activities of children, they will receive a versatile (mental and motor) experience that is adequate to their individual characteristics.

In creative dramatization and play, a preschooler performs actions that:

1) contribute to the development of the five senses;

2) develop active and passive speech;

3) help children understand human relationships and learn patterns of behavior;

4) link ideas to each other;

5) stimulate creative thought and problem solving;

6) increase self-respect;

7) develop ways of expressing emotions and feelings;

8) develop fine and general motor skills;

9) signify the joy and freedom of childhood.

While playing, children learn to concentrate, exercise their imagination, try out new ideas, practice adult behaviors, and gain a sense that they influence the world around them. In addition, children gain a growing understanding of the beauty, rhythm, and organization of their environment and their own bodies as they learn ways to communicate their thoughts, feelings, and emotions to others.

Social development

The role-playing game almost always involves the participation of several children, so it is the most important factor in the social development of the child. The game often includes elements of joint planning and cooperation. Children may argue and get upset, but they get used to dealing with the interests of others. At the same time, they begin to understand that it is interesting and pleasant to play and study with peers.

Emotional development

Children bring to play what they know about life: their knowledge and delusions, their wishes and fears.

Play reflects children's understanding of social roles and relationships. Children can also act out events they have experienced or heard about. They may act out a frightening event, such as an accident they witnessed, to help deal with difficult emotions. They may also replay pleasant events to re-experience the pleasure.

In role-play, children can dress up and become whoever they want to be. Children depict people and events not only as they would like to see them, thereby expressing their desires or fears. The game gives the child the opportunity to express negative feelings that the child cannot yet put into words.

In play, children act out life experiences by selecting and organizing roles and events in accordance with the desire to maintain emotional well-being. Through play, children increase their understanding of their strengths and weaknesses, their attachments and dislikes, their ability to lead and persuade or obey. All this contributes to the development of self-awareness.

Intellectual development

During drama play, children develop cognitive skills, learning to connect one with another, to understand patterns of behavior and to organize information. They try ideas and learn from trial and error, they plan and execute plans, and form a vision of the past, present, and future. Children use memory to reconstruct people and events. In the game, children create using materials and toys in completely new ways. Thus, dramatic play stimulates mental development not only through the support of creative manifestations, but also through the involvement of speech skills that play a key role in thinking and communication.

Literature used:

1. Filatova O. Theatrical game-dramatization // Game and children. - 2013. - № 2.

2. Silivon V. The development of creativity in children in the process of dramatization games // Preschool education. - 1983. - No. 4.

3. Makhaneva M.D. Theatrical classes in kindergarten: A guide for employees of preschool institutions. - M.: TC Sphere, 2004.

The role of play-dramatization in the development of preschool children | Article (middle group):

The role of play-dramatization in the development of speech of preschool children

According to many domestic researchers (L. S. Vygodsky, A.N. children of preschool age, in which the most important changes take place in the child's psyche, within which mental processes develop, preparing the child's transition to a new higher stage of his development. The game is used by teachers for the purpose of teaching and educating children. It is the development of the child's personality, speech, mental processes, moral qualities.

A special place in the development of speech in preschool children is played by dramatization, which is a unique tool, since in the process of such a game the sound culture of speech and its intonational structure develop.

In the works of domestic psychologists and teachers, dramatization or theatrical play is considered as an activity that plays an important role in the development of preschoolers and is a kind of creative play.

Dramatization game is a kind of theatrical game and is widely used in the process of education and comprehensive development of children, is the process of formation and development of the personal qualities of each child, his intellect, emotions, creative abilities.

L.S. Vygotsky considers dramatization as the most common type of children's creativity, since the dramatic form of reflecting life impressions is inherent in the nature of children. Theatrical play in psychological, pedagogical and cultural studies is understood, on the one hand, as a type of activity, and on the other, as a means of development. Researchers M.A. Vasilyeva, S.A. Kozlova, D.B. Elkonin believe that theatrical games are close to art, so they are called "creative games".

In pedagogical literature, special attention is paid to the game-dramatization, as a means of developing children, through which the creative abilities of the child are revealed, there is a positive effect on the sound culture of speech and its intonational structure.

In the process of dramatization, speech develops, which is a necessary condition for the child's adaptation in society. In games of a dramatic type, children develop arbitrariness, special sensitivity and attention to the actions of people in life, the ability to see and understand the meaning of the simplest actions of a person, his feelings, relationships with people, nature.

Many scientists (S.I. Merzlyakova, L.G. Milanovich, N.F. Sorokina) believe that the game-dramatization is universal in nature, since it contributes to the development of motor, cognitive and emotional spheres, as well as the socialization of children.

In his study of theatrical play, L.V. Artemov, refers to the opinion of L.S. Vygotsky, who says that a theatrical game is an unusually emotionally rich activity in which children allow adult guidance without noticing it, since the desire to play a fairy tale is enormous, a fairy tale brings joy and surprise. "theater" - these words indicate the relationship of theatrical games with the theater. Theater is a comprehensive activity that combines the word, image, music, dance. It has a special cognitive moment, characteristic only for it, its own reflection of the world, unlike other types of art. (K.S. Stanislavsky)

In a number of studies, the content component of theatrical games is considered as the possibility of creating different scenarios: improvisation, short scenes, dramatizations of a literary text. (O.A. Akulova, E.E. Kravtsova)

Participating in the game-dramatization, children get acquainted with the world around them through images, colors, sounds, through the questions posed, they learn to think, analyze, draw conclusions and generalizations. The development of speech is closely related to mental development. In the course of work on the expressiveness of the characters' replicas, their own statements, the child's vocabulary is enriched, the sound culture of speech and its intonational structure are improved. The spoken remarks and the role played put the child in front of the need to express himself clearly and clearly.

Dramatization is based on the actions of the performer, who can use finger puppets and bibabo puppets, which is consistent with the definition: “to dramatize means to act out any literary work in persons, maintaining the sequence of the episodes told in it and conveying the characters' characters”. The child uses all means of expression: facial expressions, intonation, pantomime. It is important that in the game the kid transforms into a character, controls his actions. During such games, intensive development of speech occurs, imagination develops, vocabulary is enriched, and the creative abilities of the child are revealed. All this is reflected in the further development of the child, and in the future on his educational activities. Therefore, dramatization games are necessary and useful for the child at all stages of his development.

Such games are loved by children, because by participating in them, children get acquainted with the world around them through images, sounds, colors. The great and versatile influence of play-dramatization on the personality of the child makes it possible to use them as a strong and at the same time unobtrusive pedagogical tool.

The purpose of dramatization game is to emancipate each child involved in it, and the main task is to develop intonation and mimic expressiveness in children. Dramatization can manifest itself in a variety of forms: as improvisation and composing scenes based on the content of a fairy tale, its staging and theatrical production of a fairy tale.

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