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Why Kids Love Dressing Up

  • April 27, 2010 1:06 am

For kids, dress-up isn’t limited to Halloween. Wearing costumes or other unusual articles of clothing is a favorite game for many kids. Parents can encourage this imaginative play by leaving Halloween costumes available all year.

For Halloween costumes or old clothing that you don’t wear any more, allowing kids to play with them makes sense and costs nothing. Otherwise, you would just need to get rid of the items to prevent clutter. By giving them to kids, you will contribute to their imaginative life and creativity.

Perhaps you have a budding playwrite at home. Encourage this creativity by suggesting that kids dress in costume and put on a play. The play can be short or long, complex or simple, involve only a few kids or the whole neighborhood!

You don’t need a formal stage or a curtain to pull aside at the start of the production. However, if you can improvise some sort of stage or curtain, the kids will likely be very excited about this. Props are probably going to be needed for their play, and they can easily collect items by going through the house. Make sure they understand that they will need to put away anything they take out to use as a prop.

Another thing that kids love is when their parents take part in their plays. This lets the kids be silly with the parents, and also direct the parent’s actions. Don’t be critical of the performance, the play, or your own acting. Just relax and have fun.

Performances may be different every time, or may be the same every time. Parents may want to video record performances to save them. Consider putting a tape of a performance in a time capsule so that you can view it again in 5 or 10 years.

If you do enclose a tape or disk of a performance in a time capsule, bear in mind the technology may be obsolete by the time the capsule is opened.

Another option is to write out the play as a script, and tuck this into the time capsule. Maybe in the future, your grandkids will perform it!

Why Kids Love Dressing Up