Pretending and Dramatic Play Drives Child Development

As a mother of 3 kids, I see my kids growth and play every day. I hope they can learn something while playing different roles in everyday life. I understood that pretending and dramatic plays improve child development. My kids love to go KidZania Kuala Lumpur very frequent, my daughter is a Honorable CitiZen and my son is a Distinguished CitiZen in KidZania Kuala Lumpur now. They are “Learn Life Today” by joining all the activities in KidZania Kuala Lumpur.

KidZania Kuala Lumpur is a city that run by kids. The kids get to learn and experience real-life occupations in a fun yet engaging learning environment. My kids played many activities in KidZania Kuala Lumpur. Some of their favorite activities are preparing the Happy Meal in McDonald establishment and bread making in the culinary school. It allows them to experience as a chef in preparing the food. This will improve their cooking skill, food preparing skill, creativity and motor skill. By learning this, my kids now can help me to prepare food at home or join a lot of food workshop out there. They joined food decoration contest, cupcake decoration contest, pizza creating contest and preparing food workshop. My daughter won in most of the food preparation contest as they learnt and practiced the skill at KidZania Kuala Lumpur. She is my chef assistant in my home kitchen every day.

One of the activities that my kids enjoyed were the Stabilo Coloring Workshop and the Slipper Design workshop in KidZania Kuala Lumpur. They used color pencils to design, draw and color to create any shape they want. These really help in training their design, creativity and all art skills. They like to do art- works at home. They learnt to be concentrate and focus when creating the art pieces. My daughter won in few of the coloring contest. Well done for her.

In order to train the kid’s communication, performance, presentation and public speaking skill, they have joined the dancing class, fashion show class and magic show class at KidZania Kuala Lumpur. It helped to train them to become brave and build their confident to perform and speak in front of a group of audience. My kids did very well and now they have no problem to perform in their school concert and join any competitions on the stage.

My 2 kids are pretending to be TV newscasters to report the news and weather on TV. They have so much fun to appear on TV and learn the role and responsibilities. As a newscaster, they learnt to being honest to share the news and accuracy.

My kids always ask me a lot of questions:

• What does a fireman do?
• What are the duties of a policeman?
• What does a pilot do?
• What does a doctor do?

It was really hard for them to imagine even through i try my best to explain. By doing these role play activities really can let's them get real life experience what the tasks are begin assigned to these roles and help them to understand the roles and responsibilities of each job. They need to be brave, strong and tough in order to perform the tasks. My kids had a chance to visit the fire station. They get to learn exactly a real fire brigade works and what does a fire engine equip. They also learnt about what should be done during a fire incident. They get to see through a real demo of fire fighting. This is a good education for the kids and understand saving people life and staying safe are always the 2 priorities being a fireman.

They also get to join a road safety workshop in one of the shopping malls. The JPJ officer explained the rules such as traffic lights, signboard and instruction to the kids. In KidZania Kuala Lumpur, they really simulate the real life where the kids need to pass the driving test in order to get the driving license then only can drive the car on the road in the city. The kids learnt that it is important to follow instructions and rules to avoid crashes or accident on the road which will cause life dangerous and injures.

My daughter also pretend to be a doctor to save a life and doing CPR for a patient.

I was very surprised to see my eldest daughter to become a beauty consultant and she was trying to put on make-up for her sister. She likes to become pretty and make other people pretty as well. She will took my lipstick and makeup pallet and makeup on her own every time when we go out or attend any occasions. She is talented and can be a makeup artist one day. She learnt to be look great and elegant when go out.

In conclusion, role-playing activities can be anytime, anywhere even it is at home. KidZania Kuala Lumpur is an interactive learning edutainment theme park for kids that helps to prepare them for the real world by immersing them in simulated adult occupations and real-life situations; its role-play activities and programs are aimed at helping kids "know, create, care, share, and play" - all of which support a child's social-emotional resilience.

For more information about KidZania Kuala Lumpur, please KidZania website and follow KidZania Facebook page.