2 Simple (and cheap!) Ideas to Spruce Up Dramatic Play

The "dramatic play" area in our room is among the most popular, (this is not to imply that dramatic play only happens in this area, only that it is the area where you find babies, dress up clothes, the iron, the kitchen, and more), and it is especially so this year. We have a class of nearly all girls this year, (eight girls and four boys), and in general girls are more likely to spend sustained amounts of time in this area;  I have one boy in paticular this year who loves this area and plays there everyday, and boys do like to play in this area but usually (with one or two exceptions) it is the girls who spend hours and hours in this area.  This being said, I am always looking for little things to switch in and out of the area to grab their attention and to open up their little imaginations.

1.  Recently I purchased some Mardi Gras masks from the Dollar Tree and the kids have had an absolute blast with them.

two girls all decked out for the (masquerade) ball

Don a flapper style dress and a mask and you can fly like a bird!

I am not sure what the purpose of this outfit was, but it's is cute!

Some of the boys wore the masks and tied blankets around their shoulders to be super heros!

2.  There is no end to the number of ways that kids can use a basket! I think this one was like 5 dollars

I love that they preferred to use the basket as a table to the actual table!

Sleigh ride! Yes, they were singing Jingle Bells!

Here the basket is being used as an "escape-"  a place of her own away from the others...

and here we have a "turtle!"

Cave of Wonders

Inspired by the fantastic Teacher Tom and his blog entry on a "light and dark den,"  I started begging my parents for dark colored sheets and disco balls for my vision of how I could replicate this in someway.   When I finally had a few sheets and had rounded up some Christmas bulbs that were quite reminiscent of disco balls (and one "modern" light disco ball to be used at a later date), I assembled this cave under the train table.  I had to leave the little hole in the front so that I can see what is going on in there, for safety reasons and because of regulations.

Inside there were a slew of pillows, three mini disco balls attached to the underside of the table in a way conducive to spinning, some glow in the dark stars and moons on the underside of the table (also a parent donation), and three flashlights.

They were mesmerized by the light reflecting off the mirrored balls....

... and the patterns made on the walls, "ceiling," and floor....

They made shadows on the wall and told ghost stories.

Stories about kid- eating bears...

and even a scary story about "bloody bones" passed down from Dad.

And when it was time for lunch, they begged for more time in the cave, and were only convinced to leave with promises of doing it again this after noon and the next day.

It was a place of discovery, a place to bond, a place to escape, and a place to enjoy a little bit of quiet.

The kids called it a "cave," and I jokingly called it a "cave of wonders,"  but that is what stuck with them, and we cannot wait to spend more time in the cave of wonders tomorrow.  :-)

Thinking in and out of the box (day II)

Just a few highlights from Friday...

A good part of the day was spent trying to get away from those darn teachers.

I hear only four year olds could be in that box.  

I don't know how- but somehow two children fit in that itty-bitty box. 

Where are all the children?  I only see one!

There's a few behind the barricade- the rest are in boxes, hiding. 

They created a new barricade- in a circle, for better socialization probably, and on the tile instead of the carpet, for better coloring I think.

They caught me looking at them, so they all ran inside.  

A few boys wanted to play swords with the big wrapping paper rolls, but decided that it wasn't fun to just pretend to hit things, and it wasn't safe to hit their friends: so they stood a box on end- an evil robot that needed to be beaten with "swords" and/ or "sticks." 

A girl or two joined in.

And then moved on to pretending a flattened box was a raft, which she kept "falling" off of, needing to be saved from drowning. 

Darn it, they moved the fortress and built something new while my back was turned. 

It took a joint effort to make this laptop.

"Miss Elizabeth can you tape me in this box and mail me to Florida?"

"Why Florida?"

"I want to go to Disney... but not on ice."

Thinking in and out of the box (day I)

Before starting this blog I want to make sure to give credit to Teacher Tom.  It is from his blog that I had the idea for this activity, although, as you can see, he did it on boxing day (December 26) making it twice as cool as doing it in January. 


Previous to Thursday, I collected several boxes, cardboard toilet paper and paper towel tubes, and some other odds and ends. There seemed to be no limit for the possibilities of the boxes.  

Two pairs of children made side by side houses in the dishwasher boxes, adding a smaller box to the front of each "house" for more space.  In the left house was inhabited by a girl and a boy, but the girl stayed in and the boy brought her anything she asked for in the "house" and kept other children from going in.  The pair of girls who inhabited the left side were very active; they went straight to work improving their home. 

Other children had very different designs for their boxes. 

One boy pushed this box up calling it a "skyscraper" but then changing mind, calling it the "leaning tower of pizza" instead when it was accidentally propped up on another box. 

He next realized that he could move the box and use it for a basketball hoop.

Other boys wasted no time in joining the game.  

Meanwhile, other children busied themselves coloring on various types of cardboard and styrofoam.  They loved the "squeeky" sound of markers on styrofoam, and the "bumping" sound of markers on corregated cardboard. 

Little Opal colored all of the really big letters on this box. While she colored she kept saying "not O, not O, not O."  I later heard her tell her friends she was going to color O's pink and all the other letters blue- there weren't any O's though.  

Many of the colored pieces of styrofoam were especially pretty.  

While the rest of the class was coloring, Tommy up-ended one of the "house" boxes, and decided he wanted to go down the top of the chimney (box) like Santa.

"Guys! Can someone help me get in this chimney?  I can't get in it."  No one came to help, so he made a new plan.

"Miss Elizabeth, I made steps and a railing to get into the box!" Unfortunately, they fell before he ever made it to the box and a few girls....

Figured out that you could just lift up the bottom of the box and climb under.  They claimed the "chimney" as a new place to color. (Whoever said boys were better at spacial problem solving than girls?)

 The boxes underwent several different arrangements and uses.  

One group found a way to to hold on to markers and toys that kept rolling away and getting lost under boxes and other materials.  

Another child took advantage of an empty box to "read a book" that she made out of a piece of folded cardboard. 

The children could have played at this activity for hours more than they did (which is why we did it again on Friday).  To help clean up they came up with the idea of sorting the smaller pieces into boxes- styrofoam, tubes, and small boxes- an excellent system.

I will upload pictures and write about the boxes on Friday soon!

An article worth reading

I "stumbled upon" this article today.   It discusses several important issues effecting the cognitive and emotional development of children; including commercialism, changes in education to minimize play, and hover parenting.  A great read for educators and parents alike. 


  




"It seems that in the rush to give children every advantage — to protect them, to stimulate them, to enrich them — our culture has unwittingly compromised one of the activities that helped children most [-play]. All that wasted time was not such a waste after all."   


Alix Spiegel, "Old- Fashioned Play Builds Serious Skills," NPR, 2008.