Types of Play

Unoccupied/Onlooker: Play in which the child is not directly engaged in play as commonly understood. They might stand in one spot and look around the room.
They may stare or make random movements that seem not to have a goal. In these moments, children are thinking about, perhaps wanting to join in the play.

Solidary/Parallel: Play in which the child plays alone or independently of others. For example, children playing side by side in the block center that do not share
toys or speak to each other. The focus is on the materials or toy in a functional or exploratory form of play. They demonstrate no awareness or objective of engagement with others.

Associative: Play moves into social interaction with little or no organization. Children are more interested in each other than tasks they might perform together.
Sharing toys, following friends in line, chasing on the playground or picking friends in games are examples of associative play.

Cooperative: Highly social engagement where play is organized around a task. In cooperative play children will create or construct something together, play games,
or engage in make-believe scenarios. Dramatic play is the highest form of cooperative play.

Cooperative Play
Competitive Play: Games with rules develop over time from Ring Around the Rosie to board games. Children may play as a member of a team or as individual. For
preschool age children, competition is secondary to following the rules of the game and staying in the game. Games with rules help children develop thought processes,
sequencing of events, cause and effect relationships, moral judgement, social awareness and self-concepts. A child must adapt himself to the moves of other players. The
child must pay attention to visual and tactile clues.

Physical Play: Physical play has some level of rules of engagement. Playing ball, jumping rope, races involve setting expectations and boundaries of behavior. Some rules
are assumed and some explicitly defined. Physical games help children grow agile and improve self-confidence.

Constructive Play: Combines sensory and motor functional play with symbolic play. The child must create in their mind and then construct the idea in reality. Children
discuss, plan and orchestrate construction together. Play disassembles, rebuilds and reorganizesits messy! Children engage in higher levels of thought as they problem
solve, hypothesize and tap into their memory of experiences. Enjoyment is in the process not the end product.

Socio-Dramatic Play: Considered the highest form of symbolic play, dramatic play involves the child representing an object with another object. For example, a straw
represents or becomes a light sword. These transformations occur on a personal level as well. Children may transform themselves into other people.imitating roles,
behavior and speech patterns. In socio-dramatic play, children work together to plan for and act out fantasy of their own making. In this way, the child is adapting to reality
as s/he examines how the world functions and how s/he functions in the world. In this highly verbal transaction between friends, children have an opportunity to see their
peers point of view. They learn rules for positive social engagementhow to cooperate, settle disagreements, take turns, negotiate, persuade, and defend ideas. Their

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Socio-Dramatic Play
Impact on Language Development:

Being attentive to others, listening, following directions, speaking in many forms (negotiating, defending ideas, taking turns) are developed during socio-dramatic play.

Children must interact with others, communicating meaning through the spoken word. Sentence structure evolves and takes on more adult like qualities.

They develop a narrative language. They use their voice to interpret situations by expressing joy, sadness, fear and so on.

Vocabulary takes leaps in development as children strive to understand and be understood.

For example, a child participating in a airplane adventure may develop vocabulary such as elevation, velocity, wind speed, lift. Children playing in a hospital may
develop vocabulary and functions of stethoscope, medicine and thermometer.

When children act out familiar stories, there is an increase in comprehension of the text. Familiar stories that are played out and retold, reworked with different characters and endings cause children to have a better understanding of cause and effect relationships between the characters. Moreover, the focus moves from
understanding the events in the story to understanding character motivation (Galda ,1984).

Children that reenact a story recall more of the story than children who just discuss the story. (Silvern, Taylor, Williamson, eta al 1986). Socio-dramatic play improves
memory recallor simply we learn by doing .

Dansky (1980), Pelligrini & Galda (1982) ,Williamson & Sivern (1986), Christy (1987), found that story comprehension increased with the degree of active
involvement. When children dramatized a story, they had to physically and mentally reconstruct the main characters, major events, and sequence of events.

Guiding the Play

The most powerful learning experiences are child initiated and child directed. Being sensitive to the child, teachers may guide the play experience in the following ways:
Parallel Play: Teacher plays along side the child. The teacher does not engage with the child until the child initiates the communication.
Co-Play: Teacher becomes involved in existing play, letting the children control the play. During the co-play the teacher may extend the learning by asking questions and
adding comments. The teacher plays a limited role and strives not to be at the center of the play.
Play Tutoring: Teacher takes partial control inside the play in a mentoring role . Teacher may intervene from outside the play by making suggestions for play. Teachers
should be careful not to steal the play, or become the center of the play.

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Stages of Dramatic Play

Dramatic play permits children to fit the reality of the world into their
own interests and knowledge. One of the purest forms of symbolic
thought available to young children, dramatic play contributes strongly
to the intellectual development of children.
-Piaget, 1962

In early childhood, drama needs no written lines to memorize, structured behavior patterns to imitate, nor is an audience needed. Children need only a safe, interesting
environment and freedom to experiment with roles, conflict, and problem solving. When provided with such an environment, children become interested in and will attend to
the task at hand and develop their concentration (Way, 1967).
Opportunities for dramatic play that are spontaneous, child-initiated, and open-ended are important for all young children. Dramatic play expands a child's awareness of self in
relation to others and the environment. In early childhood, the process of dramatic play is the most important part, not the production. Drama is not the production of plays
usually done to please adults rather than children (Wagner, 1976).
Dramatic play includes role-playing, puppetry, and fantasy play. It does not require interaction with another.
Socio-dramatic play is dramatic play with the additional component of social interaction with either a peer or adult.

Stage I: Imitative Role Play In this initial stage of play, children try to act, talk, and dress like people they know. Children use real objects as props. They depend on an element of reality in their play. For instance, a child may pick up a telephone and pretend to talk on the phone like Mommy or hold a doll and feed the baby.

Stage II: Make-Believe Play In the second stage, childrens play is enriched by their imaginations. Now less dependent on concrete props for role-playing, children may use a
string as a firefighters hose, or an envelope may be Mommys briefcase. The ability to make-believe moves beyond the scope of real props or costumes. Children also learn to
use their imaginations to invent actions and situations. Dramatic play is no longer confined to real-life events. At this stage, children often use such play to help them
understand feelings or deal with fears and worries.
These highly creative forms of play are structured and incorporate complex problem solving skills of planning and evaluation:

Stage III: Socio-Dramatic Play Socio-dramatic play includes elements of imitative play and make-believe play; however, it stands apart from the earlier stages in that it requires verbal interaction between two or more children. Because of its interactive nature, socio-dramatic play necessitates planning. One child chooses to be the teacher and
the other the student; one child can be a firefighter and the other a would-be victim. Because of its more complex story lines, socio-dramatic play requires that children spend
a significant amount of time in this type of play.

Stage IV : Novel Role Play Here the role-playing with peers is most important to the child. Child plays novel roles like that of an Alien invader or archetypal character such as
the Wicked Witch. The child starts to understand that one may have different roles and pretenses at different times in the sequence of play. The child is exposed to how it feels
to act in that particular social role that is prevalent in ones culture. Child may move like and sound like the character even mimic voice intonations. They truly become the
characterthe actor on a stage.
Wagner, B. J. (1976). Dorothy Heathcote: Drama as a learning medium. Washington: National Education Association.
Way, B. (1967). Development through drama. London: Longmans

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