DIY Dramatic Play Theatre

Dimples loves to dress up, he has an insanely large collection of dress ups for a 4 year old. Over the years I have collected any dress up outfit, pretend play props and funny looking piece of clothing I have come across into a toy box and it got to the point that we were hardly getting them out because there was just too much. So I decided to designate an area for the dress ups and make a play area to encourage Dimples to role play and make use of his collection. Here is the DIY Theatre I made in our lounge room. 

It was so easy, and its the lazy Mums DIY play space. I do have a sewing machine but I had 5 minutes to spare so I grabbed a red sheet, cut it down the middle and laid it across the floor then I put a string across the middle of both 'curtains' and doubled them over so that the string remained in what was now the top. I grabbed a stapler and stapled it about an inch from the edge (making sure the string wasn't in the way and was in the top side. Ok so its not ideal and you may want to sew it but it was easy and any one can do it.
I put a small hook on the wall which is opposite a baluster railing at the top of a stair case, I then tied the strong with the curtains hung from the railing across to the hook, making sure that they open and closed.

You could do it from wall to wall or across a corner of a room I guess, or if you had one of those portable clothing rails that could work. All Dimples dress ups were put in a couple of toy boxes behind the curtains and he started to do performances. Mission Complete.

Its pretty funny!
He is quite the drama King. He starts his performance with the curtain shut and counts down, then he claps three times before he rips the curtains open and springs out into action. He does high energy dances, sings and jumps around the place, he does comedy performances as a clown and falls down over and over and over laughing at him self. He always remembers to do a bow when he is finished.

Dimples tells jokes and because the height of the curtains is head height the DIY theatre also doubles as a Puppet show. He ducks down and uses props to put on a puppet show with his stuffed animals.
Its great for Family Fun. Miss Cherub sits and watches his performances excitedly and on the weekend we had a screen free day where myself, Adventures Dad and Dimples had to take turns doing performances. We spent the afternoon laughing at each other and being silly together.

Dimples has utilized all the dress up gear more in the past two weeks than he has in the past two years.
He has a Monsters Inc suit which is a favourite and a Monsters inc toy that he was talking for as if he was a ventriloquist.  He has developed quite a laugh, he always cracks me up.

Learning Concepts:
Pretend Play
Imagination & Creativity
Role Play
Being Active
Vocabulary
Imitating people, things and animals
Developing a sense of humor
Confidence in self

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Happy Adventures :)

X marks the spot

lots of loot

My little Dimples loves Pirates.

Just have a glance through this blog and you will find lots of Pirate inspired play ideas:

 From his Pirate room , to his Pirate birthday party invites , Pirate Party games , Pirate Party Grub to his Pirate theme tree House & fun things like Treasure Hunts & small world sand dough pirate play .

This one is a fun simple outdoor activity that we do often.

Buried Treasure in the back yard sand pit.

Burying the loot using a tonka dump truck

We have a collection of treasure that we use all the time.

It is just a bunch of shiny stuff like....  lucky stones, blue jewels from the craft isle, fake coins from Pirate dress ups, some kids plastic dress up necklaces cut into strands of jewels from the party section of the bargain shop, some fake pearl ribbon cut into strands, old junk jewelry and bits and bobs that I had for some reason kept from my teenage trend years but would never wear again.

A large X gets drawn in the sand pit over the buried treasure

Dimples Draws up a treasure Map, and has to put a Large X that marks the spot.

We have done this so many times that he can now draw perfect X's

Sometimes we get dressed up, all out in Pirate gear and some times he is happy just to pretend.

He announces that we are going to sail the seven seas and hunt for buried treasure, Once we find it we need to hide it from Captain Hook and mark it with a X

Here he is pointing out the X and telling me that is where he has hidden the treasure.

This is a regular game at home, I can speak fluent Pirate now. Adventures Dad was laughing at me last week saying how good my Pirate Tongue is, I quite often break out some Pirate jargon is a rusky Pirate voice to get Dimples to eat all his lunch "Pirate Grub" and if he is not co-operating for some reason and it usual works a treat. He gets in to the Pirate mood and the Pirate goes along with what Ive asked. 

We have played this game so many times and it never fails to bring out Dimples imaginative play.

He runs around the yard pretending to sail the seven seas, see islands and enemy pirates, Captain Hook and the dreaded Croc. He spots light houses and sails through rough storms, gets onto skull Island where there are skull caves that he ducks through and rushed to bury his treasure before anyone can find his secret hiding spot. Then he rolls up his map for safe keeping and sails away.

Its quite simple, yet there are so many possibilities and every time when he re-discovers the treasure, its a completely new game and a completely new treasure hunt.

Benefits of Pretend Play

Recently I had the opportinity to do a guest post @ http://positiveparentingconnection.net which resulted in some great comments. So here is an extended version with some additional ideas, links & pictures for the Captain Underpants fans...

In a busy world with what seems to be tireless amounts of chores, it is easy to fall into a cycle of giving your child the same toys to play with each day, using the TV as a baby sitter or saying "maybe next time", "hold on, I just need to finish this first" each time your child comes running to you with underwear on their head exclaiming that they are Captain Underpants requesting that you come play with them.  As parents it is important for us to acknowledge that for a child "Play" is not just leisure but is how they learn.

Captain Underpants flying through the clouds... 

 Of course there are many forms of play and endless ways to engage in play with your child. Dramatic or Pretend Play is just one way that children benefit from immensely that will also give you a chance to positively enhance their learning experiences, their self-esteem but most importantly it can strengthen your relationship with them.

Here are some of the benefits derived from Dramatic / Pretend Play-

• Pretending:  Just the act of pretending is a learning curve for a child. It grants them with an outlet to role play what they have seen in their world. This helps them learn about how the world works and practice how adults interact.
• Social Play: Pretend play encourages negotiation, cooperation, and role playing different situations. Pretend story lines and characters, turn taking, sharing are all great skills to learn.
• Social interaction: Not only does it help with social skills but it encourages a child to put themselves in someone else’s shoes and be empathetic and considerate of others. This gives them a chance to practice behaviour, manners and language that is needed when they interact in real world situations, as well as what behaviour is acceptable in public.
• Language development: Dramatic Pretend play encourages expressive language that would not otherwise be used by the child.  Often through pretend play withdrawn children can first start to express themselves by acting a certain role.  Further, this gives the parent an opportunity to extend on language skills by paraphrasing what the child has said using more descriptive language and exchanging conversations using expressive language examples.
• Imagination: Pretend Dramatic Play is a great for showing how imaginative children are. Imagination is an important building block for learning.  It is not only important in childhood, imagination is crucial for life. Just imagine a world without it, we would not have scientists making new discoveries, artists making new artworks, Santa traditions, award winning stories like Avatar and we would not be able to cognitively process these possibilities or examples.
• Self-esteem: By giving your child complete control in their pretend world and accepting them as a silly character like Captain Underpants you are enhancing their self-esteem. While they use their own initiative to develop story lines, their creative imagination to expand stories and their own personality to choose a character they enjoy, you are enhancing their self-esteem by allowing them complete power in the world & enjoying it with them.
• Motor skills: Playing is very busy work. While pretending to be adults or role playing your child is also fine tuning their motor skills. Mixing, Pouring, scooping, cooking, squatting, lifting, serving, moving around & remaining active.
• Practice: Practice makes perfect, while they are playing & pretending they are practicing all the skills they are going to need as they grow up into adults in the real world. From simple things like dressing, measuring, serving food, cooking skills, to handling money, grocery shopping, going to the doctor, answering the phone and not to mention practicing appropriate manners, behaviours and etiquette.

 

Pretend Play: Eating out at a cafe

Try to provide some Dramatic Props:

Tea sets,
cooking utensils,



Old cooking pots
outdoor mud station mud-is-good-for-you
play kitchen,



Fresh food Shop with trolley, plastic food, food boxes & Cash register



plastic food,
a cash register,
empty food containers,
Real ingredients  eg: worms-eyeballs-goblin-finger-stew



Pretend cooking with Rainbow Spaghetti.
Doll houses,
Telephone, masks,
Dress up accesories,



Flower Stand. Playdough as mud & flower arranging.

pretend money,
wallets & bags,
a pretend shop stand,


Muffin tin, Shaving Cream & real ingredients. pretend-cooking-wild-berry-muffins

play tools,
toy doctor kit,
bandages,

Doctor mask & toy doctor kit

toy animals,
kids tool bench 
building toys
Costumes pirate-party-dress ups
Make Costumes eg: making-robot-suit
Buried Treasure treasure-hunt

By accepting your child in their make believe world you give them complete control not only over the game, but over the 'world' for that short time, this enhances their self-esteem and gives you a chance to engage in their interests and their blooming personality, share in their enjoyments and it strengthens their trust in you and the world around them.

So next time a screaming Captain underpants runs past you, grab a towel and throw it on as a Super hero cape & go rescue Big Ted from the malicious tornado that’s about to hit your house.

Happy Adventures

Pirate Party Part 3 - The cake & food ideas

Pirate Theme Party for Dimples 3rd Birthday - The Treasure Chest Cake, the food ideas & inspiration.

The Treasure Chest Cake-

The Cake was a Chocolate swirl Cake that I made the night before the Party.  A Treasure Chest Cake!

This where I got the inspiration from Treasure Chest Cake recipe . With a little of my own twist of course. I used a cake board from Spotlight as the base, brown sugar as the sand with some real shells, and a smaller cake board as the base of the lid.

First I made the rectangle cake & sliced the rounded top off, it fit perfectly on top of the lid cake board. That was the first part done easily, a layer of frosting on the board (as glue) to stick on the cake, and then the cake top got covered with frosting. I used licorice as 2 straps over the top & wrote Happy Birthday over the lid then put it to the side while I did the tricky bit. I frosted the bottom of the treasure chest around all the sides and a border around the inside.

The Treasure consisted of gold chocolate coins, small jelly belly jelly beans, baby M&M's, some scull Candy's in bright colours, some candy bracelets and a few lolly rings. Lots of sugar & bright colours.

Then using writing icing I put on a key hole at the front & some more straps from licorice.
The hardest part was the balancing act- Using some skews and tooth picks I placed the lid on top. If you are attempting this my advice is to leave your cake refrigerated over night in separate pieces so that it sets and is harder, it wont work if you have a soft warm cake, then set & balance it right before serving it.

Dimples just wanted to take all the ring lolly pops from the treasure.

Food-
I printed up some black, red and white labels and thought up some Pirate theme names to re-name everything.  Everything seems more interesting when it is renamed into Pirate Jargon.

Shark Jewels fruit salad.
Served in a shark head watermelon with blueberries, grapes and watermelon balls to resemble jewels.

Candy Bar
Pirates teeth; baby marshmellows, caramel popcorn.
Cannon Balls; Maltesser chocolates and red jaffer chocolates.
Sharks Bait; Sour worms and snakes.

NOW, just a quick warning. I didn't take many set photos of the lay out and food although i wish i had have programmed my brain to do this. But after the party had started my blogging senses just flew out the window and then after looking back at pictures, I thought to myself  'why don't I have any pictures of the themed food". I had put a lot of time and effort finding themed food to serve and then, nothing!  So another word of advice to an party throwers, take a photo of everything before its party time & little hands scramble all over the place.

Anyway, I can only explain what my ideas were and show you my inspiration. Here goes,

Ships lost at sea;
These were blue jelly, layered with whipped cream to represent the rough ocean inspired by these and these neat boats  on top were orange slices made of jelly with pirate flags to represent boats (like these stripy-jelly-orange-wedges- )

We had "Sea Water" & "Pirates Punch" in jugs, as well as a blow up Pirate boat full of toddler pops and soda for the adults.

Octopus Dip-
Using the top off a Capsicum stuck in dip, I cut out Octopus eyes and 8 legs, the dip was centred in the middle of the plate and surrounding it was sliced carrot, celery, gherkins, cucumber and crackers.
Inspired by octopus-dip-recipe

Squid-
Little Frankfurt's sliced with "squid" legs, served with tomato sauce to dip in.
like the ones shown here on squidoo.com

Sail away sandwich's-
Shaped from a Pirate boat cookie cutter we had sandwich's
Devon & sauce,
ham & cheese
chicken, cheese & mayo
Vegemite.

Pirates Grub-
On top of this I cooked up some Sea shanties, some curly fries and some calamari rings.

Pirate Party Games - Part 2

Pirate Party for 3 year Old Dimples; Part 2, Games & Dress ups.

Ever Fancied throwing a Pirate party for your child? Well heres how we done it. See my previous past on the decorations & Invitations, this post is on the games, play and dress ups but keep tuned for the most important post. The Treasure chest Cake & the themed food.

Dont forget to follow this blog & like us on facebook to keep up to date with our fun adventures.

Red & Black Sensory boxes-

This was a hit, the kids called the red ones berries & the black ones caviar, they enjoyed filling up buckets of them, squishing them and feeling them, they got their feet in them and had lots of fun. Even some of the grown ups thought they were odd & couldn't resist the urge to touch them

\

A real Pirate Boat for Pretend Play-

With a cross sail and a bit of Red material I snagged at the Salvation army, this Pirate ship is ready to sail the ocean blue. Come and Join the Pirate Crew!

Off the side was the start of the planks to walk, a slide at the front and a decorated Pirate flag.

See Pirate Party Post Part 1 before this for decoration ideas.

The Pirates Tree House-

Myself and Adventures Dad have been making this for dimples for a few weeks prior to his party but we altered it and made it more "piratey" and made sure it was complete and ready for his crew to play on. It was a hit and still is. I will be doing an individual post on the finish product as it is a easy tree house made from reused or free materials and Dimples absolutely loves it, I don't think the novelty will ever run out.  So here is the quick Game view of the Pirates House: Complete with fish net, a steering wheel, a pirates flag, a telescope, ladders and split level around the tree.  The rope extended over the centre of Dimples trampoline and the kids had a ball hanging on to it as they jumped!

 



Ring toss-

In the weeks leading up to the pirate party we made Dimples a outdoor ring toss game on an old scrap of wood, I got adventures Dad to nail gun it to a star picket pole and put it in the yard with long screws here and there for the rings to go on. Then Dimples helped me paint it. We did a large Island surrounded by blue ocean, added some real sand over the island as the paint was still wet and then did some palms, a treasure box, a pirate ship. a shark and a octopus. The screws weren't long enough for the coits so we cut some hose & added them on as an extension. Of course the treasure was 10 points and the rest varied down to 1 point.

Walk the Plank over a shark Pool full of slime-

We put some beams across the yard on square crate as the planks and then a smaller wooden one in the middle saying "walk the plank" underneath this was a kid pool with sharks and ocean creatures in slime. It was just a packet of gelli baff slush! But the kids loved it, the first as little Miss K and at first she looked down and hesitated for a minute, it was cute.

It also doubled as a seat for all the crew.

Buried treasure-

I got some beads and some dress up necklaces, some plastic pirate coins, and I went through my jewellery box. I still have all more junk jewellery stuff from when i was a teenager, you know! You get a huge collection of $2 stuff that's in fashion at the time as a teenager, none of it worth anything and none of it to be worn again so there was real treasure in there as well as soon blue lucky stones that we often use in our sensory boxes --------> Look through the sensory button on the side bar for some ideas.

There were 6 plastic buckets all full of sand and buried treasure, along with a few treasure boxes that the children filled up and carried around, they took them on the boot, along the plank and into the tree house.

There were bikes, the quad, scooters, a lawn mower, Bubbles, Baloons & swings to play with as well.

Dress up Theme-

Everyone, even the "big kids" had to dress up, everyone got right into it with great spirit & fun attitudes. Everyone enjoyed seeing the little ones dress up and it added to the element of pretend play, imagination & their Pirate games.

Here are some of the Pirate crew

Its a shame the streamer blew over in this picture because Pirate J was wearing a stick on Pirate goatee and wouldn't let me get another picture :P