A Child's Right to Play

Hub na nÓg - Children's Rights

There are many types of play and sometimes play can involve two or more different types of play. When children play, they don’t decide first what type of play they will engage with - they just play.

Here’s how Bob Hughes describes types of play in his book 'A Playworker’s Taxonomy of Play Types, London: PLAYLINK, UK.'

Communication Play

Play using words, nuances or gestures for example, mime, jokes, play acting, singing, debate, poetry.

Communication play used the whole body – from facial expressions, hand gestures, body demonstrating and vocally.

Creative Play

Play which allows a new response, the transformation of information, awareness of new connections, with an element of surprise.

This play type is one of the most visual by allowing a child to access loose parts, arts and craft materials.

Deep Play

Play which allows the child to encounter risky or even potentially life threatening experiences, to develop survival skills and conquer fear.

This type of play is defined by play behaviour that can also be classed as risky or adventurous. This has important benefits to a child’s development.

Dramatic Play

Play which dramatises events in which the child is not a direct participator.

Children may also wish to use make up and costumes in this type of play.

Exploratory Play

Play to access information consisting of manipulative behaviours such as handling, throwing, banging or mouthing objects.

Fantasy Play

Play which rearranges the world in the child’s way, a way which is unlikely to occur, for example being a superhero or sitting on a cloud.

Imaginative Play

Play where the conventional rules, which govern the physical world, do not apply, for example pretending to be an animal, or having a make-believe friend to being an object, for example a tree.

Mastery Play

Control of the physical and affective ingredients of the environments, for example making a dam in a stream, building a bonfire and digging holes in the earth or sand.

Object Play

Play which uses infinite and interesting sequences of hand-eye manipulations and movements, for example examining an item and looking into how and why something works.

Recapitulative Play

Play that allows the child to explore ancestry, history, rituals, stories, rhymes, fire and darkness. Enables children to access play of earlier human evolutionary stages.

Locomotor Play

Skipping, Jumping, playing Chase.

Symbolic Play

A stick is a wand, or the grass is molten lava.

Socio-dramatic Play

Enacting real life through play, like playing house or mums and dads.

Social Play

Playing a game together and deciding on rules for that play.

Role Play

Acting a role like driving a train or having a tea party.

Rough and Tumble Play

Discovering physical flexibility and the exhilaration of display. This will not involve any deliberate hurting, but children should be laughing and having fun.