Benefits of Role Play as Part of Early Childhood Education Activities

Role Play is a part of eary childhood education activities. It brings benefits to child social development. Parents and early education teacher should give plenty opportunities of role play for kids and monitor their activites. Kids develop certain skills and knowledge through role play:

• Imagination and Creativity
• Problem solving
• Essential living skill
• Language skill
• Social skill
• Leadership skill
• Self-esteem

In role play, kids pretend to act as someone else. There are 3 different kinds of role play:

Imitating Daddy and Mommy

Do you know who are kids’ idols? They are daddy and mommy. They will pretend to play what daddy and mommy are doing. Kids will try to help you with your housechores from cooking to cleaning and washing the car. Toys that support role play: kitchen toys, food toys, doll house and baby toy

Acting as People in Real Life Situation

If you have an occupation, they will observe how you do in your job and they will imitate what you are doing. If you are home based working mom, what you are doing in your job or business will be obvious to them. They also observe people they meet in their life such as teacher, doctor, nurse, waitresss, policeman, construction workers and more. They will pretend to play as these people. Teacher is the closest person to your kids. They will imitate what their teachers are doing at school. You can observe from your kids’ behaviour if your kids’ teacher is a good teacher. Role play gives them a better understanding of adults working life. Toys that support role play: doctor play set and tools toys.

Acting as Favorite Idol or Imaginary Person

Kids also start to have their favorite idols such as Barbie, Princess or Superhero. They will collect  figurine toys, stationery, t-shirts and  memorabilia with pictures of their idols. The particularly like costume dress-up. They will act like their idols, play dress up, dance and sing or repeat dialogues from the story or the movie. This kind of role brings them to become someone else, her imaginary idol. The dialogues they repeat will build their vocabulary and enhance language skills. Role play is to encourage reading in young children.

Role play as part of early childhood education activities brings fun and kids will learn faster if they have fun. Make the role play as school production is great as the applause from the audience will give kids encouragement and build self-confidence. Below are some pictures from my kids’ school production. They dressed up as a Gingerbread man, pretend to play as Aladin storybook, dance Doremi, High School Musical and CAN CAN DANCE.