Dress-Up play is a great instrument for the child’s imagination. A box filled with wings, capes, masks, and scarves can transform into the wardrobe for a pirate ship or a princess ball.
As parents, we understand the popular place that role-playing and dress-up holds in our children’s lives, but in addition to being entertaining, imaginative play-acting is one of the most important recreation tools they can utilize. Children who role-play tend to have a higher self-confidence. It could come from the roles they play such as, super hero, police officer or teacher; all of these characters require an authoritative quality.
A child’s social skills also tend to be better as they learn to interact and engage others during role play. A princess tea party is nothing without conversation of the Royal family or comparing sparkling jewels.
Taking on the roles of the adults around them is quite common too. If Dad wears a tie to work everyday it’s very likely that will be a character of choice some days. Is Mom a doctor? Get the kids their own medical bag or scrubs.
Dress-up encourages so much more than just playtime. In addition to an expansive imagination children learn cooperation, sharing and creative thinking. If you ask a child what they want to be when they grow up they aren’t just going to tell you fire-fighter or doctor, they are going to go grab the helmet or stethoscope from their toy boxes to show you what they want to be when they grow up.
Our personal dress up bucket consists of doctor scrubs, pirate costume, various fairy wings, tutus, full tuxedo, batman costume, firefighter uniform, cheerleader costume, capes, various shoes and so much more. Use what you have, let the kids use their imaginations to turn them into whatever they want.
