DRAMATIC PLAY

Dramatic Play is considered the most highly developed form of symbolic play involves the child representing an absent object with another object. For example, a child may substitute a wooden chip for a boat, a stick for a horse, or a block for a car. At first the symbols (wooden chip, stick, block) are subjective and individual. The child makes the transformations for himself as he plays by himself.Besides object transformations, a child may take daily routines, such as going to bed, and transform these events into a play episode. These make believe transformations enter the play experience while at the same time the child is well aware of reality. In dramatic play, the child may also pretend to be someone else. She will imitate the actions and speech of that person. The imitative behavior may be of real life people and situations, such as when she plays house or doctor. The knowledge base for such imitations is usually from first hand experience, but she may also use vicarious experiences through film, discussions, or role modeling by an adult as her basis for imitation.

Dramatic play may involve fantasy roles such as when a child pretends he or she is Superwomen, Wonder Women, or Batman. Or the play may be literature-based, where a child re-creates the characters and actions of a story such as The Three Little Pigs.

When a child plays dramatically with another person, the play than becomes sociodramatic play are supported by a wealth of research. Pretend play (pretense) usually revolves around the child’s daily routines and involves day to day problems. The child is "adapting to reality." He is solidifying how the world functions an how he functions in the world. The cognitions are enumerable; they leave us in awe of the profound developments in the young child.

A child is able to take a multitude of experiences and lace them together into new ones, which represents a monument to her creativity. She is able to focus on the main characteristics of a role and enact the role within a give theme, which is a credit to her concentration and organization. She is able to control herself within the chosen context, restricting and elaborating her role in the play. Dramatic and sociodramatic play promote her mobility of thought as she sequences events using past, present, and future. For example, in pretense, she gets into the car, sees the doctor, and goes home.

Within the play is the opportunity for a child to solves problems, make decisions, and use open-ended thinking. In addition, he must match his actions with his words. his thought becomes more abstract as he generalizes his actions to different contexts. As his imagination and creativity lead him on, he also exploring new concepts.

As a child’s dramatic play becomes more sociodramatic, she must transcend from being an egocentric person to being a person who sees the world from another person’s perspective. This is an important developmental milestone for a child. The social interaction allows the opportunity for a child to see her peers’ points of view. She also learns rules for positive social relationships. She learns how to cooperate, settle disagreements, take turns, negotiate, persuade, and defend, with the play giving her plenty of "practice" time in these skills. The social side of this play affords the child the opportunity to exchange ideas and expand her knowledge. She adds the dimension of group problem-solving skill to her individual problem-solving skills. She learns how to cooperatively plan and implement the play experience.