Using pretend play at home
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Play; Preschool on 2 Jul 2010.
Homeschooling mom DJ shares how she uses pretend play to teach Mandarin at home. She wrote this on her blog:
“So last night, I decided to plan my own lesson plan. I wanted it to be fun. I took out one of the books I bought sometime ago called Literacy Play (under Language). I like the book because it uses pretend play (or dramatic play) to teach kids vocabulary. I think it is rather fun way to play.”
DJ goes on to write about the fun they all had pretending to be customer and hairdresser.
“Then I make a price list and a appointment time table for her. I also downloaded some clip art from the net, so that we can make name card. 
“I also explained what is a hairdresser and what does she do, etc. After that, I took out the price list and we discussed about how much we should charged for each item. Den wrote down the price. Then I introduced the appointment time table. She wanted to open her shop from 10am-10pm because she has no husband and baby yet. 
I let her wrote down the time on the time table.”
Pretend play is a great way to engage young learners! And as DJ has shown you can pick your ideas from anywhere and then adapt them – including language – to make learning fun.
Drop in at DJ’s blog My Journal, A Homeschooling Mom to read the rest of this story and pick up more tips from her older posts here.
Thanks DJ for sharing, and thanks also for letting me post your story here!
2 Comments so far...
Amy J. Delph Says:
2 July 2010 at 2:54 pm.
We’re doing the same thing in EDISON Explorer. We are going to start the Wild West unit soon. Students travel down the Oregon Trail over a period of 8 weeks. Each student gets a pioneer family. We give them real families that actually went down the trail. They take one of the family members and create a character, which they will control during the trip. Students encounter several scenarios each week and they need to make decisions using thinking skills and what they have learned about the West. There are real consequences for their characters and their families. We use slides to show what the different parts of the trail looked like. We learn about Native Americans, Manifest Destiny theory, the California Gold Rush, health and diseases of that time period, food from that era, and more. Hands on activities like panning for gold, cooking pioneer recipes, making totem poles, etc. makes the learning more real for them. From what I have seen, students love it. They can’t wait for the next class to find out what’s going to happen next and they enjoy making decisions and learning about the West in this way. Yes, role play is one of the most powerful ways to motivate students and help them internalize what they’ve learned. If you have the patience to do a bit of research first, it’s totally worth the effort.
Siew Hoong Says:
14 July 2010 at 2:20 pm.
Thanks for sharing DJ!
We do similar learning units at home when we prepare dinners for guests, do fund-raising activities, learn how to do First Aid and etc. Learning becomes enmeshed with family life.
Comments