Here is a list of the key benefits of role play in Early Years.
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Develops communication and language skills,
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Allows children to act out and make sense of real-life situations,
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Allows children to explore, investigate and experiment,
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Develops social skills as children, collaborate with others,
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10 key benefits of role play for children – Little Town Play
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http://www.early-childhood-institute.com/effective-role-play-plays-a-role-in-learning/
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Abstract: Young children are curious little individuals who learn by imagining and doing and one of the tools that helps satisfy this curiosity is pretending, exploring, discovering and learning by play. There are different types of play that children are a part of in a preschool and role play is one amongst it.
Role play area is an important part of the preschool classrooms as this area helps nurture a child’s imagination; improves their social skills, creativity and develops their intellectual abilities. This area is an excellent tool that teachers can use to their benefit to help children learn many valuable lessons as well as giving them an opportunity to understand how the real world works by letting them act out the following:
• Real life experiences such as travelling in a bus or visiting a shop or visiting a garden
• Every day scenarios at home such as cooking in the kitchen or dressing up dolls
• Imaginary situations such as visiting the underwater creatures, visiting the moon
Apart from giving children the opportunity to act our scenarios the role play area can also be used to teach or reinforce different concepts across literacy and numeracy such as vowels and consonants, blends, addition, subtraction etc. We will attempt to showcase some examples during this workshop on how a role play area can be used effectively in a class room.
Keywords: Curriculum; Dramatic/Pretend play; Learning center; Preschool; Role play;
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This article was passed on to us from one of our hospital partners, Nationwide Children’s Hospital. To read the full article in its original format, you can find it here: How to Talk to Your Kids about COVID-19. My below thoughts and the above video are just a commentary on the original piece.
In this important article about talking to kids about COVID-19, Dr. Nicole Dempster, a pediatric psychologist at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at The Ohio University, gives us 3 practical tips for how we can have an important discussion with kids about this virus.
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