As I was thinking about some of my pet peeves in early education settings and ranting about Walt Disney, it occurred to me that I am not being completely fair about allowing teachers to choose what they think is best for THEIR children and about encouraging eclecticism and elasticity in curricular options.

If you have a class full of boys* and girls who LOVE the Disney Princess dresses and the plastic Kardashian heels, certainly have them available – IF, and it is a BIG IF – there is still purposeful play and real learning involved in the experience of dressing in them.

My point on the Dress Up Center, is that the more raw and natural your props are for developing imagination and creativity, the better the learning will be. Imitation and Imagination are both excellent skills to develop, with imitation being slightly less ‘evolved’, but still as VITAL as imagination.

Also, no matter how we pushed in the 70’s for a sense of gender equality by seeing that girls played with blocks and trucks and boys got to dress up and work in the kitchen (STILL A GOOD IDEA, BY THE WAY!) we must understand and accept that due to natural human development plus environment, on the playground your boys will most often use sticks as weapons and girls will use them to build campfires to cook s’mores.

One year, Maria Pagnotta, an outstanding teacher I know, had a morning class of ALL boys (3’s and 4’s). She displayed all the regular props in her Home/Dress Up Center, including a child-size wooden ironing board and iron. NOT ONE of those little guys knew what the traditional use of that iron was. They used it to mash play dough, mimic a rocket launch into space, and hammer golf tees into the peg board. Maria, being the great teacher she was, let all of this occur). Now, the girls in the mixed gender, but same-aged class who used that same room in the afternoons, seemed to immediately realize the ‘normal’ use of the iron and they pressed their Cinderella gowns up a storm before heading to the ball to lose their glass slippers.

Use whatever creates the most and the most high-quality learning in your class. If your children like and CAN LEARN FROM store-bought plastic primary-colored props, use them. But, please try using more raw, natural, unmarked items so the children can use them to create their own ideas, change materials from one-use to multi-use, and not just imitate, but imagine and create.

*YES – PLEASE let the boys wear the dresses and the heels if they want to! Tell their daddies to relax. This is how we all learn who we are and what makes us feel comfortable and happy.