Supporting Superhero Play
in your Setting
By: Sophie Booth
As an Early Years practitioner it is important that you value and understand the importance of all types of
children’s play. Superhero play is a fun and exciting way for children to play, however it is often seen as
inappropriate and, in some cases, not allowed in the classroom. Superhero play allows children to use their
imagination and creativity, process and explore their feelings, practice skills such as socialisation and problem
solving and explore concepts and ideas such as right and wrong.
If you want to introduce superhero play into your classroom, it is important that you are able to balance children’s
safety yet still allow children to engage in sometimes rough and energetic play.
Here are some points to consider to effectively implement superhero play:
• Ensure you have specific rules in place which children understand and are aware of. These rules should consider:
• treating the resources and the classroom with respect.
• ensuring that children involved in the play actually want to take part.
• coming up with a signal to use where children can stop the play if they wish. It is important that all
children and adults know the signal and respect this.
• If you feel children are becoming too boisterous during play, redirect their energy by taking a break and moving
to another activity, for example getting children to draw or paint what the superheroes are doing gives time for
children to calm down but remain engaged and focused on their play.
• If at any time you do have to stop children’s play, make sure you tell the children why. This helps children to
understand the boundaries of their play. You can also ask children how they can adjust their play to fit the rules,
which encourages children’s problem solving and negotiation skills.
• Instead of children pretending to be well known and commercial characters, encourgage creativity and use of
imagination by having children develop their own superheroes. They can discover different costumes through
arts and crafts, make up their own superhero name incorporating literacy and explore super powers through
role play.
• Use superheroes as an opportunity to explore children’s personal and social and emotional development and talk
about things that superheroes stand for and value, such as working as a team, being honest, kind and caring
about each other.