LATEST STORIES
Dress Up Play!
Dress-up engages your child’s brain and memory. Dramatic play requires children to remember what they’ve seen or heard. They remember how their whānau behave when performing household chores and when they are imitating them. Or they recall the details of a fairy tale they’ve heard before acting it out.
Dress-up play builds vocabulary as a child decides what his or her character would say. It gives them a chance to expand their vocabularies with words and phrases that they might have heard in stories, but wouldn’t ordinarily use. Children may then begin to use these new words in conversations.
Who’s going to be the doctor? Who’s going to be the patient? Children must make decisions when they engage in dress-up play. They practice problem-solving problems when deciding on what costumes elements and props each character needs to act out a scenario
When a child is engaged in role-play, it helps them see the world through another’s eyes which increases empathy – whether pretending to be a parent nurturing a baby, a doctor taking care of an injured patient, or a firefighter putting out a fire. Dramatic play helps children understand the role that helpers play in our community.
Children enjoy dressing up in costumes and engaging in dramatic roleplaying. Whether your child is a dragon, a princess, or a fairy, your child’s brain is going into high gear when they put on a costume!
And although it may appear to you as just play, when your child dons that cape, crown, or pirate’s eye patch, his brain is developing in more ways than you can imagine. As early childhood educators know, play is the work of the child, and children benefit cognitively, physically, socially, and emotionally through dress-up play.
Our current Project Planning around literacy has really ramped up the children’s creativity and imagination. Storytelling and characters have such an important role in play and learning, we appreciate the support for such a great turnout and creative dress-ups! It is very clear the children have valuable reading and literacy experiences at home.