Dramatic plays for 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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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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10 performances for children, the action of which takes place in winter - Afisha-Theatres

December 23, 2017

Alexey Goncharenko

December 23, 2017

It is customary to go to Christmas trees during the New Year holidays. But at the same time, performances on a winter theme are constantly going on in the repertoire of theaters, which, depending on the mood, will either put up with this cold season, or feel its snowy atmosphere.

• Snowman School

  Moscow Puppet Theatre, 1, 25 and 29december

  Pedagogical poem based on Andrey Usachev's fairy tale

  Father Frost not only gives gifts to obedient children. He, like a wise man, or rather a magician, together with the Snow Maiden teaches the snow population, which, due to its youth and diversity of characters, must understand and experience a lot. All this the heroes do, singing and dancing, as is customary in the invisible village of Dedmorozovka.

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• The night before Christmas

  Classical opera adapted for children without loss

  Rimsky-Korsakov's four-hour opera based on Gogol's plot has been reduced to two hours so that young viewers do not get bored. This is an example of a classical production with monumental arias, beautiful scenography, flying evil spirits and obligatory carols on occasion. Parents could see such a performance in childhood, only it did not have a modern video projection, which is responsible here for the miracles of the disappearance of the moon and flights from Dikanka to the capital.

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• Silver Hoof

  Moscow Puppet Theatre. Chamber Stage, 12 and 27 November

  Bazhov's Tale on Bazhov Street

  This performance is a journey into the world of snow-covered rooftops in the Ural villages, where miracles happen. It's not just a magical artiodactyl carving precious stones. Miracles happen primarily because kind people live here, who, despite all their differences, are able to understand and help each other thanks to their warmth.

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• The sun and the snowmen

  Moscow Regional Puppet Theatre, December

  A lyrical tale of friendship

  Two freshly molded little animals at the request of the sun go to meet the sun's tired snowmen. Or rather, at first they want their cozy winter world to exist forever, but good intentions to help the suffering nobly outweigh. In the finale, the heroes will melt, but will not die, but will turn into two snowdrops.

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• Fairy tale ice cream

  Moscow Puppet Theatre, 21 December at 19:00

  Puppet Theater for teenagers

  Three polar explorers freeze during a difficult journey. Brave men on the border of the worlds are met by moraines with juicy oranges that look like the sun. Strange heroes of Stepan Pisakhov's fairy tales come to life in the boundless white space with the help of puppets: the local bears, birds and fish look like people dressed in winter, similar to bears, birds and fish. An infrequent example of a performance in the puppet theater, addressed to teenagers who understand in some ways grotesque, and in some ways parable plot twists with an unhappy ending.

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• First snow

  First acquaintance with winter and the theater

  The main character is a forest dweller of a squirrel. She lives somewhere outside the window, on which frosty patterns appear. Of course, there will be a lot of white and even fluffy things in the performance, because the tactile sensations of small spectators are also important in the first theater.

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• Morozko

  November - January

  Premiere of the musical about a well-deserved award

  Director Vyacheslav Dolgachev is known for his detailed psychological performances, of course, primarily for adults. But it also works for children and in the musical. Pushkin's contemporary Vladimir Odoevsky wrote his own version of the folk tale about the needlewoman and the sloth, and Larisa Kazakova wrote the music, turning dangerous dives to the bottom of a well and into an ice palace into an occasion for songs and dances.

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• A story about friendship between a boy and a polar bear cub played with puppets

  The white space, in which it is difficult to see at once whether it is a glacier or a bear, turns out to be cold and dangerous only at first glance. Even such different creatures as a young bear and a man can color this world for each other with their communication, as the local northern lights sometimes do in nature.

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• Dickensian readings

  The atmosphere of English Christmas in the center of Moscow

  Many generations read Dickens' prose in their childhood. Director Polina Struzhkova reminds young viewers and their parents about cozy home reading with the help of this author. Opening the magical volume of "A Christmas Carol in Prose", taking a sip of hot tea, listening to live music, the audience will imagine a Christmas story about how ghosts came to the miser Scrooge. Or rather spirits-foretellers, because they only wanted the best for him.

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• The Snow Queen

  A fairy tale without words

  The production is made in such a way that it can be performed almost everywhere and for any audience, including in a hospital. But it achieves not only charitable goals, but also goes to other venues, while not losing quality, for example, in a museum. The performance, visually resembling a book come to life, was created by professionals known for their work in major drama theatres, including choreographer Nikolai Reutov and actress Yana Sexte as Gerda.

  More about the performance

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