Playful stories: Exploring the use of dramatic play in storytimes

Research in early childhood development widely supports play as a vital learning mechanism for young children. Consequently, many libraries are beginning to embrace play as an intentional strategy for meeting targeted early learning outcomes. However, sufficient research on how play can be incorporated into storytimes to support children's early development has yet to be conducted. This study begins to address this need by exploring how two other informal learning environments-a museum and a zoo-use educator-led dramatic play experiences in storytimes with the goal of understanding how libraries might be able to incorporate dramatic play experiences in their storytimes to create a more in-depth playful learning experience. To elucidate the nature of the museum and zoo's educator-led dramatic play experiences, this study explored (1) characteristics of their educator-led dramatic play experiences, and (2) the learning behaviors that children were exhibiting while participating in the dramatic play. The results revealed that the educator-led dramatic play episodes in both environments consisted of one long, immersive oral story with other types of play interspersed within the larger story structure. The data also revealed that the children were exhibiting many different types of learning behaviors while participating in the dramatic play experiences. Based on these findings, implications, and recommendations are provided for libraries around designing and using dramatic play in their storytimes to help transform the traditional library storytime structure into a more in-depth playful learning experience.