Favorite Books to Inspire Dramatic Play

Happy Wednesday again! Caroline here with our go-to books as a basis for lessons full of creative play. Many of these are deservedly well-loved classics. They are my favorites because each one is so rich with possibility, in different ways for different age groups.  At this point, I can't pass up an opportunity to explore with these books and I ONLY read them out loud to kids when I know we will have time to create our own imaginary worlds right afterwards 😍

They work well in small settings too, if you’re looking for some fun parent-child or family time activity.

I’m A Frog! 
from Mo Willems’ Elephant & Piggie series.
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If you’re not familiar with this one - or if you’re familiar with every other Elephant & Piggie except this one, here’s the rundown: 

Piggie pretends to be a frog...
Elephant worries (dramatically and with great panache, of course) that Piggie really IS a frog...
Piggie assures Elephant it is pretend, and that anyone can pretend... 
Elephant overcomes his anxiety and pretends to be a cow.

A great book for those very young and/or just beginning to grasp the concept of cooperative intentional dramatic play, use it as a jumping off point for a conversation about pretending, giving each child the opportunity to demonstrate for the class how to pretend that he/she is something else, or inviting the children as a group to pretend they are something - show me how a horse runs! Don’t forget to shake your horse tail! 

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Shrink the conversation about pretending and focus on the collaborative pretending itself. Once the kids establish what they are pretending to be, assign a few of them to create a scene with each other. “What if Lisa’s princess and Davina’s froggie were in a garden together? What would they say to each other? What could they be doing?"

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Where the Wild Things Are
by Maurice Sendak
Where the Wild Things Are has hours of inventive improvised theater in it. Though it has a more specific plot - e.g. it is the least “neutral” literary canvas in this list - it has so many wonderful places to go with play.

Create a rumpus of your own with dance and musical instruments. Grab some crayons and glue sticks and feathers and fake fur (we ❤️ Michaels) and anything animal-print that can be cut up and glued down, and make yourselves some cardstock crowns or headbands or belts or armbands.

At left, our alternatingly rapt and fierce wild things

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Figure out what a rumpus means to you - is it musical cacophony, a spooky surprise? 
What would you dress up as if you were a mischievous little Max (do you have a white fox suit?), or if you were a wild thing - in what ways would you want to be wild? Would you have fur, feathers, teeth, claws, horns - and why? 
Where would you travel in your boat - in and out of days and through a year - would it be a land full of candy or books, a giant playground? Would you take anything with you?

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​Harold and the Purple Crayon
by Crockett Johnson (love that pen name!)

After the read-aloud, everyone gets a purple crayon! Or any color, but I like to make sure everyone gets the same color as helps kids focus a little more on creating than on comparing their work to others’.

​Each child draws a place they’d like to visit (grandma’s house, outerspace, abstract land full of cats and seesaws...and what on earth is that thing in the corner?...), and the class "gets on" a train or bus or vehicle of some kind and visits each place together, with the children acting as tour guides to their magical lands.
​Time to ride those seesaws with those cats, everybody!

At left, Harold coloring page!

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Discuss the concept of “setting”. Then it’s fun with banner paper! Roll it on out and do some collaborative illustration. Decide together on a rough story outline. Where do we go? How do we get there? What do we see there? Who do we meet?
You can either mark off the paper into sections to indicate “pages”, or for extra theater fun draw a few large pieces of scenery as backdrops for the awesome scenes you're about to improvise!

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My top 2 books are related, both written by Antoinette Portis ...and both equally appropriate for

Not a Box 
Admittedly, I worry that children will stand on top of the box and fall through it, and I’ve grown to accept that with younger ones, every single child will inevitably sit in the box at one point or another. Plus, once you’ve introduced the concept of playing in a box, it’s only fair to bring out a few big boxes to play in - so I tend to skip reading this one if I don’t have a box or three in the room.

and the ❤️BEST BOOK EVER❤️📖...

Not a Stick 
We use this as a blueprint for Not-A-[Thing], a game for absolutely any item. Go around the circle with an object. The more "neutral" the object, the better, i.e. something that has an identifiable shape but no labels, or better yet, something the kids are not familiar with the main purpose of (that net bag that holds avocados or clementines, unusual packing materials, large empty spools, etc). But it really works with anything. It’s not a scarf! It’s a hat/umbrella/picnic blanket/parachute/puppy dog... Just remind the kiddos to make sure to SHOW us what it is by acting it out, rather than tell us what it is with words!

If you are in the NYC area, we can bring these activities and more to you! Contact us to learn about our after school programs and in-school workshops!
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Enjoy! And to make your hump day a little happier, we close with a short video and a free song....

BONUS! We have collaborated on an adorable song to go with these 2 books, and the Not-A-Thing circle activity. We're still working on our technological sophistication, but shoot us an email and we'll send you the song ASAP!

Yay, send me the Not A Stick Song!

The Not-A-[Thing] game can be played at any age!

​Bitty City Baby in NYC discovers a paper towel roll is Not Just A Paper Towel Roll....