Many of the children attending Crawford Childcare enjoy role playing games and dress-up. Role playing around shopping has become so popular in the Adventure room we have a whole area dedicated to it.

Aoife and Eilish love playing in the kitchen. They carefully share out food portions and serve other children the food on plates. Aaron particularly likes Aoife to wait on him and usually beams at her as she delivers his portion. Tess enjoys cooking and  she gathered up both food and plates placing them all carefully together in the cooker. Sam was a bit more inventive with his food, placing it in the shop till.

It is often said here that the best play thing is an empty box. Empty food boxes of real life food items really brings our shop area to life. Sometimes the children like to package their playdough products in them also. The children make all sorts of food from playdough to sell in the shop including buns, sausages and pizzas. We have a few shop keepers amongst the children in the Adventure Room and some show a real knowledge of money, counting and even giving change in this play.

One of our shop keepers recently asked Robert to select his food from a long line of carefully displayed goods. Shopping baskets and trollies are well used on these occasions. The shop keeper used the till to add up the money and charged Robert 10 euro.

Role play develops social skills and communication it also allows children to explore different every day experiences in a safe way which leads to a deep understanding of what is happening around them. The role of the early years educators being to provide the resources which follow the children’s interests.