I have a very child centered, open ended program. I plan things sometimes but we don't do themes.

Almost all the play things in my house are open ended.

I thought it might be interesting to do a prop box theme each month. Not necessarily attached to other activities, just to change up dramatic play.

I tried beauty shop in September. The first day I had a school age dcg who totally got into it...did everyone's hair, gave manis and pedis, took appointments.

After she went back to school the others made towers with the curlers and picked up stuff with the curling iron, etc.

Maybe the beauty shop wasn't relevant enough for them? As you know, every center includes dramatic play, all day long.

Do you do themed dramatic play or prop boxes? Do you introduce and talk about it? Does it emerge from other stuff they might be doing (probably the best idea, actually).

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I guess you could say I do prop boxes, or something similar. I plan my curriculum based on the children's interests mostly - except for next week when we're doing Halloween stuff (well, that is an interest of theirs...).

I change out a few things in my playroom (not everything) every week or two or sometimes at their whim more frequently. The dramatic play area always has some food, plates, etc in it and I usually have babies around because they are sooo popular among my boys and girls. Then, I always try to have some other dramatic play thing going on as well. The 'prop boxes' that I have so far are: doctor/vet, travel, dress up, camping, salon (although the kids have never shown an interest in this yet, so we haven't used it). I also have a box for construction stuff, but I put that in my block area when we have it out. I'm sure there are many more ideas out there I just can't think of them right now...

ETA: I also did flower shop this summer and the kids really liked it.

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Here's some more ideas:

http://prekinders.com/prop-boxes/

I like the shoe store idea, I've never done that before.

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