Role Play

Role Play

6 August 2018

Role play is the fun activity a child engages in when they act out or take on another character.  This kind of play stimulates their imagination and enhances their social development.  Role play is an important part of a child’s development and builds on a number of skills and dispositions such as confidence, communication, social skills, creativity and imagination, problem solving and at times, cooperation and turn taking.

Role play allows a child to naturally become someone or something else. This means that they become another character or fictional person.  In order for this to occur, children need to be provided with spaces, scenarios, props and support to develop these real life or imaginary worlds.  Role play allows children to act out events that they may have experienced in real life, therefore also using prior knowledge as a support for their imaginary play.

Setting up an environment to encourage role play may be as simple as providing children with real life resources such as tea towels, cloths and dust pans for them to do the household chores, or using props such as dolls, blankets, pretend food, handbags and recycled keyboards, cellphones and pads and pens for the children to explore family play and working life.  Do not overlook the simple yet effective props - blankets, scarves, tubes and large boxes that the children will use to be a pirate sailing the turbulent seas, or an astronaut seeking a new planet!  Children’s imaginations are vivid and very real to them, so provide them with some props for provocation and see what adventures they go on.