A child uses paper boxes as “cars,” assigns peers as “drivers,” establishes…

Concept: Piaget classifies children's play into three developmental forms: practice (functional) play, the repetition of simple motor actions for the pleasure of the action itself; symbolic (pretend) play, in which one object is made to stand for another and children take on make-believe roles; and games with rules, in which the play is organised around shared constraints that bind every participant alike.

These forms are not sealed off from one another. As pretend play becomes social, rules begin to appear inside the make-believe itself, at first laid down and policed by one child who directs the play and only later mutually negotiated, so a single episode in the transition years can carry symbolic play and the earliest games-with-rules structure at the same time. Parten's account of social participation adds that such rule-governed pretence is cooperative rather than solitary.

Application: Three markers appear together in this episode:

1. Object substitution: paper boxes are made to stand for cars. Using one object to represent another is the defining marker of symbolic play.

2. Make-believe role assignment: peers are cast as drivers. Roles are taken on within the pretence, and because those roles are given to other children the play is social rather than solitary.

3. Rule setting and oversight: simple traffic rules are established and the roadway setup is supervised. Constraints that regulate all the players alike, rather than one child's private pretence, are the defining marker of games-with-rules behaviour; here they are laid down and policed by the organising child, which is why this is the early rather than the mature form of that behaviour.

The pretence supplies the symbolic element, and traffic rules imposed on and binding all the players supply the early games-with-rules element, so the episode is a combined form of symbolic play and early games-with-rules behaviour.

Cross-check: Testing the episode against the neighbouring categories:

• Exploratory play investigates the properties of an unfamiliar object and, as described, keeps the child alone; this episode neither examines what the boxes are like nor leaves the child unaccompanied, since peers are given parts.

• Symbolic play without meaningful social involvement accounts for the pretence but not the participation: peers are assigned roles and the traffic rules are shared with them.

• Functional play is the repetition of simple motor actions for their own sake, and as described it runs under direct teacher guidance; here the activity goes well beyond motor repetition and it is the child, not a teacher, who organises it.