Play Acting and the Act of Playing
Gillian has just begun writing stories and plays. To be accurate, I should say that she has been making up and acting out stories for quite some time, but she has just recently become interested in dictating them to me and then acting them out afterward. Below are her first two efforts.
The Baker and the Sweetie
Someone's supposed to watch the honey, and that's the baker. The baker's supposed to play with the sweetie. I can see myself as a baker. They play with the baby sister. Then the mommy and daddy come to pick up the child.
The Dinosaur and the Sweetie and the Mommy and the Daddy and the Baby and Don't Forget the Grandma and Grandpa
The dinosaur comes in and eats the baby and mommy and sweetie.
These are not as complex as the stories she makes up as she goes along, but for first efforts at making up and dictating stories, they aren't bad. The first has a beginning, middle, and end. It encorporates things she is interested in from her life (anticipating a baby, baking cookies with mommy), and has a built-in safety net in the end when mommy and daddy "pick up the child."
I like the second one because the title is longer than the play.
This activity of hers reminds me of Vivian Paley, a teacher, child psychologist, and MacArthur Grant winner who taught kindergarten and nursery school at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. (She was actually teaching there when I was in kindergarten, and still was when I taught there for a year after college.) In her many books, she focuses on dramatic play; she encourages and measures child development using their own dictated stories and play acting. I recommend her books to anyone interested in either child development or the human urge to play act. The link above may be particularly interesting to those of you who are gamers. You'll recognize some of what she's describing.
Also brought up in the linked article is the shift in early childhood curriculums, from guided play to a more structured, academic focus which ironically does less to teach the children how to analyze and process and think about their world. I'm concerned about Gillian's upcoming school experience in a system more worried about standardized tests than actual thought. I'll be doing my best to give her the education that she might be missing in school.
So bring on the pretending and the stories.
The Baker and the Sweetie
Someone's supposed to watch the honey, and that's the baker. The baker's supposed to play with the sweetie. I can see myself as a baker. They play with the baby sister. Then the mommy and daddy come to pick up the child.
The Dinosaur and the Sweetie and the Mommy and the Daddy and the Baby and Don't Forget the Grandma and Grandpa
The dinosaur comes in and eats the baby and mommy and sweetie.
These are not as complex as the stories she makes up as she goes along, but for first efforts at making up and dictating stories, they aren't bad. The first has a beginning, middle, and end. It encorporates things she is interested in from her life (anticipating a baby, baking cookies with mommy), and has a built-in safety net in the end when mommy and daddy "pick up the child."
I like the second one because the title is longer than the play.
This activity of hers reminds me of Vivian Paley, a teacher, child psychologist, and MacArthur Grant winner who taught kindergarten and nursery school at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. (She was actually teaching there when I was in kindergarten, and still was when I taught there for a year after college.) In her many books, she focuses on dramatic play; she encourages and measures child development using their own dictated stories and play acting. I recommend her books to anyone interested in either child development or the human urge to play act. The link above may be particularly interesting to those of you who are gamers. You'll recognize some of what she's describing.
Also brought up in the linked article is the shift in early childhood curriculums, from guided play to a more structured, academic focus which ironically does less to teach the children how to analyze and process and think about their world. I'm concerned about Gillian's upcoming school experience in a system more worried about standardized tests than actual thought. I'll be doing my best to give her the education that she might be missing in school.
So bring on the pretending and the stories.