Grace and Josephine sat working at the natural materials and loose parts table in the Atelier all morning. They had made an elaborate fairy home and the fairies were seated around a wood cut table with jewels for food. They narrated their characters while they played.
Grace: Ok! We’re going back to the desert!
Josephine: Why?
Grace: Because you guys are fighting.
Josephine: But we can cut it in half.
Grace doesn’t respond and the fairy party stays at the table.
Grace breaks ‘character’ and asks Josephine: Should this one be in the middle so they both can share it?
The fairy play continues in harmony as the fairies share jeweled cherries and take see saw rides.
Often in dramatic play, characterizations are repeated or ‘tried on’. Grace seems to reconsider her ‘reward and punishment’ stance in light of Josephine’s compromise. She then anticipates another fairy confrontation and puts thought into a different outcome. When you hear ‘play is children’s work’, this is what is meant. Children are listening, processing and making meaning of everything they are exposed to. But it doesn’t stop there. They filter the information through their values and personal emotions and work to make the world, and their place in it, align. – Kristin