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Dramatic Play in Outdoor Play Environments

Editor's Note: Content provided by IPEMA, the International Play Equipment Manufacturing Association.

What is Dramatic Play?

It is widely accepted in the community surrounding young children that play is the dominant activity that leads development. Children learn best not when they are told, but when they can act upon their environments and construct knowledge for themselves. They do this best through play. A commonly held belief among those in early childhood education is that play is the most important activity of young children because it is during play that children are at their most competent. Lev Vygotsky, a leading early childhood theorist, strongly stressed this point, explaining that “in play the child is always behaving beyond his age, above his usual everyday behavior; in play he is, as it were, a head above himself” (1978, p. 74).

But there are different kinds of play, different stages of play, and different purposes underlying play. The play of preschool children is different from the play of toddlers, which is different from the play of school-age children (Jones & Reynolds, 1992). Generally, children under the age of three engage in exploratory play. Their objective is to explore the world through physical actions, to experiment with their movements and discover what they can do. They poke, dump, taste, stroke, and pull whatever they encounter in order to learn about their world. From three to seven years of age, however, children’s actions become more about “play” than exploration, and efforts to know and understand become more than sensory experiences. They require spontaneous action, action which takes the form of play (Jones & Reynolds, 1992). Children become representers of their experiences, rather than just doers of activities. The understandings that they have built through exploratory play experiences are symbolized by things, actions, plots, and behaviors in their representational play.

In representational play, also known as dramatic play, preschoolers use speech and body language to become storytellers of pretend events. Through dramatic play, which is also commonly called pretend/fantasy play, children continue to build understandings of their world, just like toddlers and young infants do through exploratory play. In essence, it is “play for understanding” for older children. “Fantasy play is their ever dependable pathway to knowledge and certainty” (Paley, 1988, p. viii). This will be further explained in the section below on research into the connection between dramatic play and cognitive development.

Dramatic play is an imitation of reality. Children create play “themes” and act them out by participating in various roles. By doing so, they are able to imitate the physical world and human relationships through symbolic representation. Children perform with concrete objects (e.g. dolls, pots, tricycles, or sticks), which are symbols for something else children have experienced directly or indirectly (e.g., babies, cooking, cars, or swords) (Landreth, 1991). For example, children may pretend that a log is a boat, or that they are Batman and Robin fighting all the bad guys in Gotham City. Dramatic play is a time of non-literal, symbolic behavior that merges the child’s imagination with the real world, giving everything an “as if” nature.

Smilansky (1968) provides six criteria of dramatic play. The first four are behaviors in which young children may engage in alone, and the last two involve social dynamics in the play (Smilansky & Shefatya, 1990).

• Imitative role-play: the child performs a make-believe role and acts it out through imitative bodily action and/or speech.
• Make-believe with regard to objects: play behaviors and/or speech dialogues and/or materials or toys that are not replicas of the object itself are substituted for real objects.
• Verbal make-believe with regard to actions and situations: verbal dialogue takes the place of body movements.
• Persistence in role-play: the pretend play episode lasts at least 10 minutes.
• Interaction: more than one person participates in pretend play episode.
• Verbal communication: verbal dialogue is exchanged between the players.

Why is Dramatic Play Important?

Research suggests that engaging in dramatic play can have beneficial effects on children’s cognitive development, learning, peer relationships, and emotional well-being (Ellis, 1973; Fisher, 1992; Landreth, 1991; Piaget, 1962; Stambak & Sinclair, 1993; Smilansky, 1968).

Cognitive Development

Researchers have concluded that children who actively participate in dramatic play during preschool and early elementary years are advanced in intellectual development, score higher on tests of imagination and creativity, and have an enhanced ability to think inventively (Freyberg, 1973; Pepler & Ross, 1981). According to Piaget (1962), play is vital to cognitive development. However, he explains that children are not acquiring new skills during their dramatic play episodes; instead, they are practicing skills they have recently acquired in non-play situations. Without this practice in play contexts, Piaget explains, their skills would be quickly lost. Play allows children to assimilate information they are gathering from their environment into their minds and helps them make sense of it. Through play they are able to find ways to “own” their knowledge.

Dramatic play can also be viewed from a “preparation for life” perspective. Jones and Reynolds (1992) explain that pretending allows children to represent real-life problems and practice solving them. They are able to question things and to learn about the world in ways that make sense to them. “Play is self-motivated practice in meaning-making; its themes are repeated over and over until the child is satisfied that she’s got this figured out” (10) (author’s emphasis). By participating in dramatic play, Jones and Reynolds (1992) argue that children are developing learning and problem-solving strategies, as well as utilizing their knowledge and skills.

Social Development

Smilansky (1968), on the other hand, investigated how dramatic play helps children develop socially. Generally, preschoolers’ play becomes more social as they get older. Smilansky (1968) found that by engaging in socio-dramatic play (dramatic play that involves more than one player), their social skills were enhanced. Participation in socio-dramatic play requires a high level of social ability, including cooperation, negotiation, sharing, problem-solving, self-regulation, and appreciation of another’s play efforts. The amount and complexity of fantasy play have been found to be predictors of social skills, popularity, and positive social activity (Connolly & Doyle, 1984). Thus, “young children who engage frequently in social fantasy play are more socially competent than those who play less frequently” (Frost, 1992, p. 34).

Through participation in socio-dramatic play, children develop skills necessary to regulate their own actions in order to keep the play going, to control themselves and their emotions, to be flexible in their responses to other players, and to transition from being an egocentric being to a social being. Frost (1992) captures the importance of dramatic play to children’s social development when he states that it is difficult to overemphasize the value this type of play.

Emotional Development

Children, due to limited vocabularies and understandings of emotions, are generally unable to verbally express their feelings. Instead, they express them through the safe outlet of play (Landreth & Hohmeyer, 1998). Children’s play is their natural form of communication. Thus, they are able to express themselves more fully through self-initiated spontaneous play than they can verbally. “For children to ‘play out’ their experiences and feelings is the most natural dynamic and self-healing process in which children can engage” (Landreth, 1991, p. 10). Dramatic play allows children the opportunity to use toys to say things they cannot verbalize, to do things they would otherwise feel uncomfortable doing, and to express feelings and emotions they might be reprimanded for expressing in other contexts.

Despite Sigmund Freud’s limited amount of work with children, he also believed in the emotional benefits of play. In 1953, he expressed his recognition that children’s occupation is play, and that they take their play seriously and expend a great amount of emotion on it. Freud proposed that play works as an emotional cathartic release, as a means of reducing stress and anxiety, and as a way to understand traumatic experiences. Once negative feelings such as fear and aggression have been expressed, children are able to move on to communicate more positive feelings such as joy and contentment in their play.

As children engage in dramatic play scenarios, they act out relationships and experience putting themselves in another person’s shoes, which leads to increased, more sophisticated understandings of others and themselves. Dramatic play contributes to children’s emotional development by helping them reach places of increased happiness, more positive self-concepts, and greater feelings of power (Frost, Wortham & Reifel, 2001).

“Children have this amazing capacity to generate ideas with their own imaginations.” (Corley Peterson Brooke in Fedorczak, 2001)

Promoting Dramatic Play in Outdoor Environments

Dramatic play on playgrounds offers important benefits for children. However, creating play spaces that promote dramatic play is a complicated process and one that has generally been ignored on public and school playgrounds. As Frost (1992) suggests, "outdoor play environments, particularly public school and city park playgrounds, are frequently barren of needed props for dramatic play—play houses, water and sand areas, wheeled vehicle areas, dress-up clothes, containers, tools, and so forth" (82). Considering the environment of the playground is important because where children play directly impacts how children will interact with each other, and their environment will affect the cognitive level and intensity of play.

Designers of play spaces and playgrounds need to consider the individual, cultural, and social needs of children and adults in order to create environments which promote dramatic play out of doors (David & Weinstein, 1987). Designers and researchers over the last three decades have sought to influence playground design and development to increase the play value of manufactured play equipment (Friedberg & Berkeley, 1970; Hewes & Beckwith, 1975; Rivkin, 1990; Thompson, 1996; Frost, Wortham & Reifel, 2001). Playgrounds continue to evolve as new materials and research is introduced. One area of playground equipment development that continues to evolve is how designers can promote dramatic play. Three areas of importance for the promotion of dramatic play are the thematic playground equipment, arrangement of space, and the creation of unique play features.

Thematic Playground Equipment

In the Novelty Era of playground development, designers attempted to promote dramatic play by designing play structures that were supposed to appeal to the imagination. Designers of play equipment built play equipment shaped like space ships, submarines, covered wagons and animals. Since the 1970’s, modular equipment with decks, links, and new materials has replaced novelty equipment as the preferred equipment on playgrounds (Frost, 1992). Modular equipment tends to be abstract, because designers follow the early childhood principle of “open endedness.” As Talbot and Frost (1990) wrote, “Forms which are overdefined tend to dictate meaning, and this is the antithesis of the magical state of mind we are seeking” (221). Mason (1982) suggests that play environments need to be flexible and adaptable: “A cubby which can be a house one day and a fort the next day is far better than one which looks very much like a castle and wouldn’t inspire the children to treat it as anything but a castle” (17). The emphasis on abstract, open-ended designs has resulted in manufactured play equipment which is abstract, colorful, and which encourages functional physical activities like climbing and sliding over dramatic play activities.

Recently manufacturers have begun to return to the designs of the Novelty Era. The possibilities of modern plastic molding allow for shapes which were impossible to manufacture previously. Some of the possibilities currently being manufactured include tree shaped, dinosaur shaped, and pirate ship designs. Unlike their metallic predecessors from the Novelty Era, these materials can be made to more closely approximate the objects which they are meant to represent.

The importance of realism and abstractness is important for children’s play in that play experiences with open-ended abstract materials and closed-ended realistic materials affect how children think. Research on the importance of realistic and non-realistic materials on children is not conclusive. Exposure to open-ended materials results in ideational fluency as children are more able to reason divergently and have more varied ideas for interactions with materials (Fisher, 1992). On the other hand, Trawick-Smith (1993) found that children’s use of realistic and non-realistic play objects for dramatic play changes as children mature. He found that more realistic props were important for 2- and 3-year-olds, while 4-year-olds liked a mixture of realistic and non-realistic play objects and that 5 and 6 year olds preferred non-realistic play props. Ihn (1999), found that realistic outdoor play equipment like pirate ships and play houses were enhanced by loose parts, but that the shape of the play equipment was not sufficient alone to enhance dramatic play on the playground. Finally Hartle (1996), found that a playground with minimal materials encouraged more dramatic play than conditions where materials like dolls and blocks were added to the playground.

The implication for playground designers of these studies is that realistic playground equipment does not necessarily detract from children’s play, especially for toddlers and young preschoolers. On the other hand the realistic nature of the material may not have much of an effect on older children’s development of dramatic play. A middle ground between total abstraction and absolute realism may be a safe alternative. Playgrounds which have both abstract and realistic elements may appeal to a range of users and thus extend the possibilities for dramatic play on the playground.

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