Preschool Role Play

Through role-play, preschool aged children have the chance to really explore who they are, develop their social skills, and explore things like gender identity. Children often times play dress up and role-play that they are in a specific career, a mom, a dad, or another person that they know. Young children may dress up in the opposite genders clothes, and this is normal at this age. They are simply exploring their likes and dislikes and they should feel free to explore these things in the classroom. Their ability to explore this freely helps them to feel accepted and that they can explore without feeling self conscious about others. This could look like boys exploring gender specific toys, roles in life, or clothes, and the same for girls.

They can do just as much with puppets as with role-playing with costumes and such, but they might feel much more at ease with sharing about certain things, such as a traumatic event, something that might be bothering them, or simply to communicate with others. Puppets can be a way for them to express things that they might feel afraid to say because they act as a character rather then his or her self (book). Specifically, when using puppets, role-playing, or play therapy, traumatized children can express their problems by using other objects, play, or puppets more freely then just telling you what is going on. They project onto the item they are using to communicate and they are able to process the feelings surrounding the traumatic event and begin to heal. Much of this type of therapy is beneficial to children majority of the time. The one down fall, which I concluded on myself, would be that children may begin to rely on objects and play as their only source to express their feelings and to work through traumatizing events in their lives. They have to also learn how to express themselves without other objects as they