Recently, parents are often concerned about the issue of early education for children. Didactic games and educational toys are in high esteem. A one-year-old baby is introduced to the alphabet, a three-year-old is encouraged to solve problems and add syllables. At the same time, parents do not teach their kids to play store, “mother-daughter,” or hospital. Role-playing games are often structured like an educational lesson, which discourages interest in them. All this leads to the impoverishment of the child’s personality.

Definition

Children tend to want to grow up quickly and take an active part in public life together with adults. Due to their age, they cannot yet bake cakes themselves, babysit babies, drive a car or fly into space. The contradiction is resolved through participation in children's role-playing games.

At their center is a fictional situation. The plots of the games are varied: a visit to a beauty salon, a flight to the moon, and Spider-Man saving the world. The child takes on the role of a specific character and acts on his behalf. Most often, kids turn into adults or favorite characters. In this case, the players have to negotiate with each other and act in accordance with their roles (mother and kids, villain and hero, doctor and patient).

Developmental factor

As we can see, the purpose of role-playing games, which children unconsciously pursue, is to model social relationships. By getting used to the role, children learn to regulate their behavior in accordance with the rules of society and coordinate actions with other players. They will need all this for further education at school. The child feels like an active person who can influence the surrounding reality.

At the same time, imagination develops rapidly. Children use a stick instead of a spoon, build a car out of chairs and create an exciting story themselves. The game allows you to go beyond everyday life and creatively process the experience gained. To do this, you have to use existing knowledge, solve the problems that the characters have, verbally express your opinion, negotiate, and experience a rich palette of emotions. It is through such games that a preschooler’s comprehensive development occurs.

Role-playing games in preschool educational institutions

Today, parents are actively involved in the intellectual development of their children, devoting little time to analyzing relationships between people. Therefore, the games of modern children are often based on the plots of cartoons or computer games. They reproduce a simple set of actions (for example, a fight between ninja turtles or Winx fairies). The relationships between the acting characters are primitive. The life of adults in the game is represented by a small set of situations: “Hospital”, “Barbershop”, “Shop”, “Family”.

A kindergarten teacher can correct this situation. According to the Federal State Educational Standard, role-playing games should be given one of the leading places in the educational process. It is important to observe the following principles:

• The teacher turns into an equal play partner.
• He plays this role constantly, complicating the plot as the children grow up, expanding their understanding of the world around them.
• From the very beginning, it is necessary to orient children not only to the reproduction of actions, but also to the meaning of what is happening, the relationship between the characters.

Game Guide

It has already been proven that the ability to play does not arise spontaneously in a child. That is why the role of the teacher is so important when organizing role-playing games in kindergarten.

First of all, he must introduce the children to the surrounding reality. Playing cook will be much more interesting after an excursion to the kitchen; reading books about the North Pole can be a reason for playing polar explorers. Then the necessary attributes are prepared, often with the involvement of the children themselves.

When organizing a game in younger groups, the teacher takes the initiative. He thinks through the plot, distributes roles between the students, and himself turns into one of the key characters. However, if this happens every time, children's initiative and free creativity are extinguished.

Therefore, it is important to create conditions for the emergence of independent games. To facilitate this, the teacher after some time transfers his role to one of the students. Or he suggests a problematic situation, from which children must find a way out on their own.

Classification

In pedagogy, there are five types of role-playing games in preschool age. These include:

1. Household games that reproduce family relationships (cooking dinner, child's birthday, bathing a doll).
2. Social games related to people's professional activities (school, flying on an airplane, building a house).
3. Patriotic games, when kids imagine themselves as war participants or brave astronauts.
4. Games based on the plot of a fairy tale or cartoon.
5. Director's games, when a child comes up with a story and plays several roles simultaneously with the help of toys.

Deciding on the scenario

The choice of plot largely depends on the inclinations and interests of the children. The teacher prepares for the game in advance; drawing up an outline will help him with this. Typically it has the following structure:

• Selected topic, age of preschoolers.
• Goals and tasks that will be solved during the game.
• Required attributes.
• Roles and actions associated with them. For example, visitors to a cafe place orders, have lunch, chat, and pay before leaving. The administrator meets and seats them and manages the staff. The waiter takes orders, passes them to the kitchen, delivers food and collects money. The cooks prepare the dishes and hand them over to the waiter.
• Possible dialogues between characters. It is important that children learn to speak politely and behave civilly in public places.
• Approximate plan of a role-playing game. It should be interesting to children and allow for changes. So, in a cafe you can organize a play area for visitors with children and invite musicians.

Attributes

The doctor needs tools and a white coat, the cook needs dishes, the driver needs a car. A properly organized group environment contributes to the development of children's play. The teacher should stock up on attributes for role-playing games:

• Ready-made kits for doctors, cashiers, mechanics, etc.
• Waste material: broken cutlery, food boxes and jars, medicine bottles, bottles of creams, masks, shampoos. All this will be useful for playing house, pharmacy, store, and beauty salon.
• Homemade items. A microwave oven from boxes, cakes from foam sponges, fishing rods from twigs... Older preschoolers can make such attributes for role-playing games with their own hands.
• Costumes of sellers, police officers, hairdressers and sailors. You can make them from old shirts or cut out capes from lining fabric. The identity of the costume will be finally clarified by the corresponding inscription or symbolic image of the profession.
• Masks, real and homemade, crowns, hats, scarves.

The younger the children, the more attributes they need to play. Older preschoolers are able to express their imagination and find substitute objects.

Nursery group

Young children are just learning to manipulate toys. Organizing a role-playing game is not yet possible, since children do not know how to interact with each other. During the first half of the year, the teacher teaches them to perform simple play actions: rock a doll, roll a car, feed a bear. In this case, substitute objects are actively used: a block instead of an iron, pieces of paper instead of porridge. The games involve the participation of one child or a group of children, each of whom performs the same action.

From the second half of the year, the teacher teaches how to build chains of two or three situations: the doll must be fed, and then rocked to sleep and put to bed. First, he plays out the plot himself in front of the children. Then, after feeding the doll, he asks one of the kids to rock it to sleep, and the other to take it to bed and cover it with a blanket. All actions should be well known to the children from their own experience.

Junior group

From about 2.5 years old, the beginnings of role-playing games appear. The baby's goal is to reproduce the actions of a certain character (mother, doctor). However, he does not yet indicate his role verbally. At this stage, the teacher’s focused work is important.

The children's attention, out of habit, is focused on objects: they enthusiastically bandage the patient's hand and place a thermometer. The adult must reorient them to interact with their play partner. For this purpose, a minimum of toys is used so that they do not distract attention. To get used to the desired role, special costumes and masks are widely used. The adult initially becomes the child's partner, encourages him to enter into dialogue, and then gives way to another child.

By the age of four, children already consciously take on one role or another, build simple dialogues with peers, and perform actions specific to their character. The plots of the games are taken from the children’s life experiences: traveling by car, visiting a doctor, visiting a doctor, buying groceries in a store.

Middle group

At the age of 4-5 years, children master role-playing games with several characters and learn to navigate the relationships between them. It is advisable that the plot involves the presence of one main character (for example, a veterinarian) and 2-3 secondary ones (a nurse, animal owners, a pharmacist selling prescribed medications).

It's great if there are more characters than children. Then, as the game progresses, they will have to change their behavior, portraying either a sailor or a diver. At the end, you can enter another role similar to the main one. So, if a trip on a ship is being played out, you can organize a meeting with a passing ship. Captains will tell each other about their adventures, and children will gain a deeper understanding of the relationships between different roles.

The favorite games of this age are “Hospital” and “Shop”. However, the teacher must expand the children’s experience, introduce them to new situations: an ambulance, a visit to the zoo, a city tour, a visit to the theater. The plot is not thought out by the teacher in advance, but develops according to the laws of improvisation.

Role-playing game in older groups

According to the norms, five-year-old children must initiate games on various topics. Moreover, the plots are taken both from one’s own experience and from books and films. Preschoolers turn into pirates, conquer Mars, and go on a trip around the world. They get used to the role deeply and experience the same emotions as their characters. Before the game, they independently agree on the plot and assign roles. In this case, the teacher must turn into an interested observer.

However, today's children find it difficult to rise to this level of play. They often reproduce the same familiar patterns borrowed from television programs. Role-playing games in older groups are divorced from reality and contain a lot of aggression. And here the systematic work of the teacher is required to enrich the children's experience.

Let's act wisely

If the games of older preschoolers are poor in content, there are two reasons: undeveloped imagination and lack of knowledge. Therefore, the teacher needs to expand children’s ideas about the world around them through reading books, watching cartoons, excursions, and meetings with representatives of different professions.

In order for children to quickly get involved in a new role-playing game, a group is prepared together with them, models of a ship, house, and rocket are created. It is important to set the tone from the very beginning, to offer children an interesting game situation. It is better to give key roles to children with a rich imagination. During games, the teacher should not call the real names of the children; all instructions and comments are made taking into account the chosen plot. He himself soon leaves the game, interfering in two cases:

• When a conflict arises.
• When interest in the game wanes. In this case, you can offer an unexpected plot twist (a huge octopus attacked the ship) or introduce a new character (Baba Yaga comes to the hairdresser).

The task of adults is to prevent role-playing games from disappearing from the lives of children. After all, it is through it that the child’s socialization occurs, imagination develops, and the ability to regulate one’s behavior in accordance with the role played.