It’s an obvious fact that children love role-playing. This is the reason why they are raving about role playing toys like doctor playsets. Kids learn by playing and doing and pretend play shapes their early childhood experience. Role playing or pretend play is when children act out scenarios based on their experiences or when they pretend to be somebody else. Pretend play may be as simple as a child playing doctor with himself or with friends. But children build fundamental skills as they continue to engage in pretend play. This kind of play is significant in itself because learning through role-play is generally considered by leading child experts as a basic form of learning and advancement of skills for small kids. The value of role playing to a child’s development has been proven by countless researches and studies.
Let’s take a look at the skills children learn and develop while they’re playing pretend doctor:
Language Skills
Doctors communicate with their fellow doctors, other medical professionals as well as their patients on a regular basis. By playing pretend doctor, children are encouraged to use speech to communicate with one another. Even if they are playing alone, they can pretend that they are talking to their dolls and teddy bears.
Pretend play offers the ideal setting to open children to learn new words. The more they engage in pretend-play, the better chance they expand vocabulary. When they role play as doctors seeing patients at their clinics, they’re learning all the various words related to medical practice. In addition to the fact that pretend plays expands their perspectives on various subjects, it assists with decreasing pressure as language and circumstances become more natural. Learning new words helps children express themselves effectively.
Cognitive & Thinking Skills
Pretend play provides your children with a variant of problems to solve. Whether it’s about two kids wanting to play the same role or who gets to use the stethoscope, children will be presented with situations that they need to resolve on their own in coordination and cooperation of their friends. They will learn how to compromise and settle conflict in their own terms. Your children will learn at an early age that they will be faced with similar problems and challenges as they grow older.
A child’s cognitive thinking is improved and developed through pretend play at an early age. By engaging in imaginative and creative play, children learn how to use their imagination and think creatively to deal with different kinds of situations. We solve daily problems, be it simple or complex, through creativity and imagination. It’s important that children learn how to use these skills at an early age so imaginative play should be encouraged whenever possible.
Emotional Development
Through role playing, they see things in different perspectives and experience a wide range of emotions. They will be able to express both negative and positive emotions and teach them how to deal and overcome difficult emotions.
