The Major Developmental Benefits Of Dress-up Play For Kids In Australia

Kids love to dress-up especially if they can wear costumes like the book week costume. Kids through the ages have loved dressing in costumes and being engaged in role playing. Whether your kid is a princess, a dragon, or a fairy, his brain goes into high gear the moment he wears a costume. And though it might be ‘just play’ to you, once your kid dons that pirate’s eye-patch, crown, or cape, his brain begins to develop in a lot more ways than can be imagined. As early children educators understand, play is children’s only work, and they benefit physically, emotionally, cognitively, and socially via dress-up play. Here are some main developmental benefits

Brain building

Dress-up tasks your child’s memory and brain. Dramatic play needs them to recollect what they heard or saw. They recall how their mum behaves while executing household chores when they begin imitating her. Or they remember details of a fairy tale you’ve told them before while acting it out.

Vocabulary building

The play builds your kids’ vocabulary as each of them decides what his character is going to say. It offers them the chance for expanding their vocabularies with phrases and words they might have heard in stories, which they probably wouldn’t use ordinarily. Kids could then start using these new words in their conversations.

Empathy

When children are engaged in role play such as when book week arrives and they are wearing their book week costume in Australia, it helps them in seeing the world via another person’s eyes which raise empathy levels – whether they are pretending to be a parent that’s nurturing his/her baby, a firefighter that’s putting a fire out, or a doctor caring for an injured patient. Dramatic play helps kids in understanding the role which helpers play in all of our lives.

Problem-solving

Who is going to end up a doctor? Who then ends up as the patient? Kids must decide on certain things when partaking in dress-up play. They get to practice problem-solving when they have to decide on the costume props and elements that every character requires for acting out any scenario.

Emotional development

Kids are consistently confronted with frightening situations which they do not understand – whether it’s viewing violent images on television, or witnessing a real-life accident. They process their own fears via play, which helps them greatly in making sense of the world, and overcoming their feelings of being helpless. By letting them use role playing to act out their fears, you are helping their emotional development.

Socialisation

The play inspires taking turns and cooperation. Kids get to learn how they can negotiate as they come to agreements concerning rules to follow and which play they should engage in. They develop genuine interest in others and they learn how to truly give and take.

When children partake in dress-up play, especially those ones that involve actually dressing up in costumes like the book week costume, then their imaginations are granted absolute free reign. There is certainly no limit to who they can then be, where they can then reach, and what they can finally be.