Teacher Stacey

Oct 92 min read

Types of Play

Updated: Oct 9

Play is enjoyable, spontaneous, meaningful, symbolic, voluntary, intrinsically motivated, and involves active participation.

I’m about 8 years old sitting in a new Sunday School class and I hear the chipper teacher say with a smile full of teeth, “Ok boys and girls, we are going to start today by playing a game! Don’t worry, it’s going to be fun!” All these years later I can still remember the fear washing over me like a cold shower.

An introvert by nature, this was sheer torture for me. I just wanted to sit on my metal folding chair in this church basement for the required 45 minutes until I saw my mom’s face at the door to pick me up.

By the definition above, was this play? It certainly wasn’t enjoyable. It wasn’t spontaneous. The teacher had planned it, not the children. I was in no way intrinsically motivated to participate and it was not voluntary.

True play is highly engaging in and of itself for children. When children control the direction of play and are not playing towards a reward, they are playing for the sake of fun! We do not need to persuade them to do it more, nor do we need to restrict it from them.

Below are a few of the many types of play you will see from children. The types of play have been sorted by many experts in the early childhood field. This is just one example of the various styles of play we see in preschool aged children.

Object Play: using an object as a prop for play, either as it was intended or in a new way is what is known as object play.

Construction Play: is any type of play where a child builds something from something else. Children may spend countless hours building and engineering if given the materials.

Artistic Play: when children’s creative juices start really flowing and the activity they choose to do is to make something.

Sensory Play: Playing using any of our 5 senses.

Dramatic Play: Any play where a child is using a prop to represent something else, or he himself is pretending to be someone or something different than he is, is considered dramatic play. Sometimes it is referred to as sociodramatic play. Dressing up, the doll house, toy cars, block play, puppets, toy kitchen; the list is endless. Virtually everything in our environments can be used in dramatic play.

Last but certainly not least is: Rough and Tumble Play:While some of us cringe at this one, it is equally as important as the others. I heard a speaker at a conference once call it “lion cub play.” If you look at many mammals in the animal kingdom you will see the young ones playing. When we observe their play it is rough. Some experts call this “risky play.”