Dramatic Play
Encouraging Dramatic Play With Your Six-Year-Old
Encouraging Dramatic Play With Your Six-Year-Old
For 6-year-olds, dramatic play is social and an important opportunity for children to practice their social skills. They enjoy being in the company of “actors” (including you!) — discussing roles, sharing ideas for props, trying out lines and talking through a character’s motivation. Their increased attention spans and awareness of details allow them to stick with and extend play themes for long periods of time, modifying and embellishing plots as they pick up where they left off.
You can encourage your children’s love of dramatic play and theater by supplying story ideas and open-ended props and materials. Encourage children to dramatize books, stories, movies and songs. Provide art and writing materials for making props and costumes and to write signs and scripts. Maybe they’ll put on a show together with friends or neighbors! And when social problems arise, invite children to role play and use their imagination to solve real-life problems.