Dramatic Play Resources

Our Fun Dramatic Play, Farmers Market theme printables are a must for stress-free purposeful pretend play for preschool & Kindergarten Kids.

To the untrained eye, Dramatic Play, or pretend play,  may seem lacking in educational benefits, and may seem like a whole lot of effort and mess, even a waste of teaching time!

But any EYFS teacher worth their salt will tell you that a dramatic-themed play area in the classroom is an essential part of the early childhood curriculum and that incorporating a designated pretend play area will greatly benefit the learning outcomes of young learners. And there’s a stack of research to support this too.

Read on to find out why dramatic play is so important…

What is Dramatic Play?

Have you ever met a student who doesn’t love playing make-believe?  They find it so much fun and it’s usually the area in the classroom that has to be teacher monitored to make sure everyone can get a go!

Apart from being FUN, did you know that dramatic play is also a vital part of normal child development?

Dramatic play is s a type of play where children assign and accept roles and act them out. It’s pretending to be someone or something else. It is also known as imaginative play, or pretend play, and it is the process of acting out or role-playing everyday experiences like playing ‘school’ ‘mummies and daddies’ or ‘shops’ and the benefits of including dramatic play in your classroom are huge!

These include:

• Learning about themselves and the world: their likes, dislikes, their interests, and abilities.
• Work out confusing, scary, or new life issues.
• Develop important complex social and higher-order thinking skills: negotiate, consider others’ perspectives, transfer knowledge from one situation to another, balance own ideas with others, express and listen to thoughts and ideas, and assign tasks and roles.
• Extending vocabulary: engage in authentic language development, talking to each other, listening, asking questions, and using words and conversation for real purposes.
• Cultivate social and emotional intelligence:  building social skills, negotiating, sharing, and taking turns, reading social cues, recognising and regulating emotions.
• Expanding attention spans while they plan play activities that last increasingly longer periods of time.
• Develop literacy & numeracy knowledge and understanding.

Pretend play can take on multiple forms and can be structured or unstructured:

• Structured play has a pre-determined set and desired outcome. A scenario is set up for the children, like a grocery store, a cafe or a hospital, and the children then choose and assign roles from what it available and then work through problems that arise within the set.
• Unstructured play is where children have the freedom to choose their own scenarios and often create their own sets based on what is available to them. 

Dramatic Play Farmers Market Kit

The most obvious way to create pretend and dramatic play opportunities are to provide your child with toys with that purpose in mind.

A great area does not have to be over-the-top complex or sophisticated. It can be small and basic and still have the same effect on the children’s learning. The key is to design the area with a clear purpose of intent for learning using a theme. 

Below you will find our Farmer’s Market Dramatic Play-Themed Set. It includes:

• Fruit & vegatble labels
• Shop posters – fruits, vegetables, price lists, worker of the week, shop local and more…
• Opening hours, register, pay here and more… & roles badges
• Shopping lists
• Shopping & working at the farmer’s market sequencing cards
• Fruit and vegetable picture cards
• Numbers 0-30 math mats for number recognition and counting

Check out the video & equipment list for setting up your own Farmer’s Market Dramatic Play Area.