Role play is an important part of child development, as it builds confidence, creativity, communication, physical development, and problem solving. Along with being a fun activity, it also allows children to get into character and act out real life roles or fictional performances.

When children express themselves through pretend play, they use language and storytelling skills to create a shared pretend scenario. Multiple themes merge and new ideas, players, toys, and materials are incorporated into the play without interrupting its flow. 

The Otters’ class at Woodland Sai Kung are immerse in a project called ‘What We Can See in Summer?’.  

When discussing about summer in class, the children were excited to share that they like to eat ice cream during the summer hot weather. Based on that information, the teachers and children created an Ice Cream Shop. They used colour pompons to be the ice cream, and made cones out of paper. The teachers gave pretend money for the children to buy the yummy ice cream in the new shop. 

They invited the children from the other classes to visit their Ice Cream shop. Everyone had great fun choosing their favourite flavour and paid for their selected ice cream. The children had ownership of this small project as they were the ones who decided and created every single detail of their very own Ice Cream Shop.