Front cover image for Free-Play Behaviors in Preschool and Kindergarten Children

Peer-reviewed

Free-Play Behaviors in Preschool and Kindergarten Children

The present study concerned age differences in the social and cognitive play of children. It was revealed that kindergarten children displayed less unoccupied, onlooker, solitary, and functional activity and more group and dramatic play than preschoolers. Examination of the combined Parten-Smilansky Play Scale revealed preschoolers to engage in significantly more solitary-functional and parallel-functional play and in less parallel-constructive, parallel-dramatic, and group dramatic play than their kindergarten counterparts

Article, 1978