Dramatic role-play or “jeu de rôle” is a great way to encourage your kids speaking in French in a dedicated play space by using themed content vocabulary in a playful manner.
A “jeu de rôle” is a technique or activity whereby our French little learners get to impersonate a character (real or imaginary) in an imaginative environment set up for play purposes.
Imaginative “jeu de rôle” plays an important part of early childhood development as it helps develop their oral language skills, early reading skills, early writing skills, cooperation and social skills in a dedicated dramatic play space in French!
In this blog post, I would like to share the Dental clinic play space that I set up for my son.
I recently took my son to see a dentist. No particular urgency – just a routine check. Our dentist is fabulous with kids.
She is so caring and she takes the time to explain everything and anything she does during the consultation; so much that my son got so intrigued by what it means to be a dentist!
Then I thought to myself, why not bring the Dental clinic to us, and use this opportunity to learn new French vocabulary and learn how a Dentist operates a clinic to help his patients?
To achieve this, I decided to create a range of Dental Health themed printables and use them to set up an inviting Dental clinic for my son to play in at home!
We have limited space at home and I didn’t want to buy more pieces of furniture so I tried to re-use what we already had at home:
For the waiting area, I simply repurposed our small sofa and used the posters, signs and labels to decorate and create an inviting space. I placed my son’s animal plush toys on the sofa in the waiting area, and they became the patients.
For the reception area, I used our Ikea Flat table and Ikea Latt chair. I used the posters, signs and labels to decorate and create a reception area, and added some staple accessories.
For the Dental clinic, I used a tiered-shelving unit to set up the dental-related tools, accessories, forms, etc. I placed an inclined Ikea Latt chair on top of a cube, covered it with a white towel to create the exam room. I placed one of his dolls on the ‘dentist chair’ and covered it with one of our play silks to give it a dentist vibe. I used labels, signs, bunting and forms to give the space a Dental clinic vibe. You could also add some cotton buds, cotton balls, cotton pads in clear plastic containers.
I used our DYI light table to create a radiography space. I didn’t like the look of the X-Ray photos when printed out on real paper and used on the light table, so I recycled some real X-Rays to use on our light table. You might have kept some pregnancy X-Rays or injury X-Rays which would look fabulous and so real for your little learners to use on the light table. My son loved looking at these on the light table.
You could also add some information books or any craft activity about dental health, dental care or dentist in your play space to decorate it further. You might even like to encourage your pre-schoolers to help create additional items for your dentist practice depending on their age!
The whole play space looked so cute and inviting. My son was immersed straight away into space, and engaged in purposeful imaginary role play in French!
There is a lot included in my play pack. Depending on how you want to set up your dental clinic, you may want to use all of the printables provided or you may select just a few. You might even like to encourage your pre-schoolers to help create additional items for your dental practice depending on their age!
As your kids play and imagine in a dedicated French-inspired environment, they will be building fantastic content-specific vocabulary in French!
If you would like to grab this play pack and set your play area, click on my floating cards below:
0 Comments