By Rachel Lister
The wonderful thing about encouraging preschoolers to participate in pretend play is that it can become whatever they want it to be. Preschoolers who are interested in cars can create a pretend garage or race track. Preschoolers who want to imitate their parents can set up a center that mimics their parents work environment or imitate behavior they see in their home.
Emotional and Social Development for Preschoolers
Preschoolers can learn a great deal about the world through pretend play.
Emotional and social development is just as important in a quality preschool
education as academic education. Preschoolers who develop good social skills
early on will be better prepared to be successful during their school years
and to become an emotionally healthy adult.
Dolls are a wonderful tool to encourage preschoolers to develop empathy and
compassion for other people. Even though preschoolers are working hard to
develop their independence, they still spend most of their time being cared
for by other people. Having the opportunity to care for someone else helps
preschoolers to understand that other people have needs and feelings too.
Group Play
Preschoolers are just beginning to participate in group play but they still
have not mastered difficult concepts such as sharing and patience. Pretend
play offers preschoolers the chance to merge parallel play with cooperative
play. Preschoolers can play on their own while other kids enjoy the pretend
play center at the same time or they can participate in pretend play
activities together. Pretend play allows preschoolers to play together by
acting out situations that they see in their daily lives. This takes some of
the pressure out of cooperative play for preschoolers.
Pretend Play as a Stress Reliever
Preschoolers feel stress just as the rest of us do. Stress can come from
many sources. Preschoolers may become stressed if their daily routine has
changed or if they are board. The addition of a new sibling in the family or
the divorce of their parents can drastically change their behavior and the way
they interact with other children. Pretend play can help preschoolers deal
with difficult emotions. It can be hard for preschoolers to verbalize their
feelings when they are stressed out, but during pretend play they can act out
the situation or emotions that are bothering them. Preschoolers who are
struggling and acting out in the preschool classroom may be better served by
spending 10 minutes on their own in the pretend play center to deal with their
feelings than by sitting in time out.
Pretend play can also be an important tool for parents and preschool teachers
to determine how a preschooler is coping with the various stresses that are
present in their life. Preschool teachers can watch for warning signs during
pretend play that will give them clues about whether or not a preschooler has
been abused in any way by someone in their life. Preschoolers can let their
parents and preschool teachers understand things that are bothering them and
things that are important to them in a way that they may not be able to
verbalize on their own.
