| The Blue Swatch of Cloth
It was a simple thing really; just a one-yard long swatch of blue cloth left over from some long- forgotten home improvement project. I stuck it in my book bag. I figured I would find some use for it at preschool. It lay forgotten in the school bag for several days, when a child noticed a corner of cloth peeking out one morning. “Mrs. Allen, what’s that blue thing in your bag?,” Gretchen asked. “It is just a piece of cloth I brought from home,” I answered. “Would you like to play with it?” Gretchen nodded excitedly and I extracted the cloth from my bag. “Here you go,” I said. “Have fun.” Gretchen grabbed the cloth and headed off toward the Dramatic Play area with a smug smile on her face. Less than a minute later, Gretchen had the cloth wrapped like a blanket around a baby doll. After putting the doll in the toy baby buggy, she happily pushed it around the classroom stopping frequently to let other children admire her “baby,” and announcing to whoever was listening, “It’s a boy. His name is Benjamin.” At clean-up time, Gretchen brought the cloth back to me and asked what to do with it. I responded, “Let’s just keep it in the Dramatic Play area, shall we?” Gretchen shouted, “Super,” over her shoulder and raced back to the center placing the cloth in a basket full of dress-up clothes. Over the next week, that simple swatch of blue cloth became Yolanda’s bridal veil, Tommy’s magic carpet, Ahmad’s ocean (which was filled with imaginary pirate ships), and Molly’s super hero cape. My classroom was filled with toys and dramatic play props of all kinds and the most requested item had become my blue swatch of cloth. |
Looking at the Field Notes carefully, it can be seen that pretend, or symbolic, play was definitely in evidence. Because preschool children have typically reached Piaget’s preoperational stage, this is to be expected. However, the children’s experiences did not quite approach what we would call dramatic play. Dramatic play, like pretend or symbolic play, involves use of the imagination not only to transform objects and actions, but also to sustain role-play (Smilansky, 1968). As children mature, their symbolic play can become quite complex and involve elaborate play scenarios and diverse roles.
When two or more children engage in the same dramatic play episode, they are engaging in socio-dramatic play (Smilansky, 1968). Socio-dramatic play is the most complex form of dramatic play and requires cognitive abilities such as problem solving, perspectivetaking, oral language skills, and imagination. Socio-dramatic play also requires children to engage in social interactions not only as themselves, but also as those roles they are pretending to be.
Smilansky and Shefatya (1990) conducted cross-cultural research and compared the play behaviors of young children in two countries—Israel and the United States. The focus of the research was to examine children’s abilities to engage in dramatic and socio-dramatic play and also to identify connections between those abilities and children’s subsequent academic performance. Based on their research, Smilansky and Shefatya concluded that abilities associated with socio-dramatic play stimulate both social and cognitive development in children, which, in turn, contribute to their later academic success in school. Smilansky went on to develop a form of “play tutoring” to support children’s involvement in dramatic play (Olfman, 2003). She identified six elements that were necessary for high-quality dramatic and socio-dramatic play:
· make-believe role play is part of the play scenario,
· ordinary objects are transformed into items needed for the play scenario,
· vocalizations or verbal descriptions sometimes take the place of actions or situations,
· the play scenario lasts at least 10 minutes,
· at least two players interact within the play scenario (socio-dramatic play only), and
· some verbal interaction between players is involved (socio-dramatic play only).
Socio-dramatic play provides children with open-ended opportunities to make choices, solve problems, improvise, discover new ideas and interests, and develop confidence in their abilities. As well, socio-dramatic play quite naturally reflects children’s own cultures, including interactions with materials and use of language, particularly if their caregivers and teachers provide them with those materials and the freedom to bring their home language.
Pretend play draws from children’s prior experiences and offers benefits to their future experiences as well. Real-life experiences that are rich with sensory impressions and meaningful conversations ignite the imagination and stimulate pretend play (Elkind, 2007; Rogers & Evans, 2008). Consider, for example, the scenario presented in Field Notes 5.2.