Socio-Dramatic Play Analysis

Play is an essential element for early childhood development as it plays an important role in developing children’s language, physical, cognitive, emotional and social skills. One of the important types of play that children usually experience is the socio-dramatic play, classified as a type of construction and symbolic play by Piaget (Wood, 2013). Most children are able to engage in socio-dramatic play spontaneously (Kemple, 2008). Children at the age of 3 to 7 are able to participate in the socio-dramatic play (Gronna, Serna, Kennedy, & Prater, 1999). It involves partnership between two or more children in which the play is developed through their interaction in playing their role (Wood, 2013). It is stated that socio-dramatic play can bring

In order to be approachable to the social contexts, it is important for children to develop the skill of social competence (Fung & Cheng, 2017). Social competence refers to the capability of an individual in interacting with others, solving problems and communicate with others while regulating emotions. During socio-dramatic play, there is a large amount of peer cooperation required (Kemple, 2008). Children need to cooperate with each other to develop the play. They need to negotiate, discuss, elaborate and solve the problems they faced when playing. According to Wood (2013), peer play that requires a lot of social-interactions such as the socio-dramatic play can contribute to social competence as children are able to be exposed to sufficient chances in developing their interacting, sharing and cooperating skills. During socio-dramatic play, ideas about the play needed to be contributed by the children. During the cooperation and collaboration, children may face conflicts, problems and challenges that they need to solve. The experience that they have in solving those problems will then develop their conflict resolution skills and self-regulation of emotion in themselves. These are important elements in developing the children’s social competence. Children learn to interact with other while regulating their emotions and thus helping them to be able to

As mentioned previously, during socio-dramatic play, interaction between players is an important element. The interaction consists of verbal interactions such as expressing and sharing of ideas, discussion, negotiation and compromising. All these interactions involve verbal communication with others. During the play, children can either approach others and initiate a conversation or be engaged in back and forth interaction with others. As children are being engaged in conversations, they are developing their verbal communication skill in the social context. They learn how to communicate with other people effectively. The socio-dramatic scripting in the play also contribute in the developing of communication skill as children are participating in the conversation carried out by their role (Gronna, Serna, Kennedy, & Prater, 1999). Metacommunicative skills which occurs when stepping in and out of the play also helps in children’s social learning (Wood, 2013). Children then can develop into effective communicators which allows them to make friends (DET, 2016). These shows that through socio-dramatic play, communicative skills of children in social context can be