¶ … Role of Play In Learning Experiences for Young Children Although many educators believe the play is a frivolous activity that young people should engage in only after they have completed more serious pursuits, empirical observations of children at play confirm that these experiences can also provide valuable learning opportunities. Despite a universally accepted definition for play, some of its defining characteristics include the following:

Play is active: This means that watching television or other sedentary, non-participatory activities are not regarded as play, but using a video game platform such as a Wii to play virtual golf or tennis on a television can be regarded as play.

The activity is voluntary: Children choose to participative in the activity voluntarily rather than being compelled by their peers or adult authority figures. This means that being forced to participate in an obligatory soccer game at school may not represent play to many children, while a "pick-up game" of baseball in a vacant lot comprised of willing and enthusiastic players can most certainly be considered as play.

The activity produces pleasure: Just as play is difficult to precisely define, so too is pleasure but this defining characteristic of play means that young people enjoy the activity for its own sake, even if it is as simple as bouncing a ball or as complicated as building...

While children obviously intuitively understand that the cardboard box is not really a nuclear-powered submarine, space ship or Formula race car, they also know that they are having fun pretending they are in a non-threatening way (at least to themselves instead of space aliens), making this an especially salient element of play.
Other researchers have also weighed in on what types of activities constitute authentic play, with another useful defining characteristic being the lack of a need for a purposeful or meaningful outcome from the activity, with the activity itself representing the important outcome for the child. For instance, young children making mud pies do not expect to be able to open a real bakery with their products nor do they expect them to outlast the next rainstorm. They do however expect to have fun pretending these and countless other things while they are playing in the mud, so this characteristic should be included in the definition of play as well. In addition,…