This week in Quartz room we have been exploring our interest in dramatic play. It all started when we noticed that the mornings, when the children come over from Shale room, they were wearing some of Shale’s dress up clothes. They seemed to enjoy exploring the aspect of becoming someone else in these clothes.

Also, in Quartz room, many of the children will take the wicker baskets with handles and carry them around like they are bags. They wave to the educators and say “Bye! We’re going on a trip” and then walk around the classroom waving to everyone. In the Alberta Curriculum Framework it tells us that when children are engaging in socio-dramatic play “they can take up cultural roles and practices, play out their hopes, fears, and dreams, test relations of power, and imaginatively explore new possibilities.”

The other day one of the educators fulfilled a wish of a child and gave the little boy two ponytails in his hair (on top of his head) before he went home. When he came back the next day with the ponytails still intact, the educator asked the child “oh! I see you still have your hair up – you didn’t want to take them out for bedtime?”. The mother told the educator that he didn’t want to take them out the night before because “he was a puppy.” In the morning, he didn’t want to take them out because “he was a caterpillar”.  How amazing is that? Something as simple as two ponytails can transform and spark a child’s imagination to become something different than what they are.

Have a great weekend

Kaitlin, Erin, and Kerry