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Play Types
Imaginative Play Play is about far more than simply letting off steam. Through play children explore the world, learning what cannot be taught.
There are many different types of play. The sixteen play types below were set out in A Playworker's Taxonomy of Play Types, by Bob Hughes, PLAYLINK, 1996.
- Symbolic play—when a stick becomes a horse
- Rough and tumble play—play fighting
- Socio-dramatic play—social drama
- Social play—playing with rules and societal structures
- Creative play—construction and creation
- Communications play—e.g., words, jokes, acting, body and sign languages, facial expressions
- Dramatic play—performing or playing with situations that are not personal or domestic, e.g., playing “Harry Potter” or doing a “Harry Potter play”
- Deep play—risky experiences that confront fear
- Exploratory play—manipulating, experimenting
- Fantasy play—rearranges the world in the child’s fantastical way
- Imaginative play—pretending
- Locomotor play—chase, swinging, climbing, playing with the movements of your body
- Mastery play—lighting fires, digging holes, games of elemental control
- Object play—playing with objects and exploring their uses and potential
- Recapitulative play—carrying forward the evolutionary deeds of becoming a human being, e.g., dressing up with paints and masks, damming streams, growing food
- Role play—exploring other ways of being, pretending to drive a bus or be a policeman or use a telephone.
Taken from The Playwork Primer, by Penny Wilson of Play Association Tower Hamlets.
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