Object play involves playful activities with toys or other objects, instead of social or interactive play with peers.
Play is certainly an important component in the course of children’s development; in fact, it takes up an appreciable portion of their time budgets, considering that all children engage into play activities throughout their childhood. Many definitions have been put forward in an attempt to define what play is and of the different types of play available in the literature. Some have had more examination than others. For example, there is a great amount of literature on children’s pretend play, while research on rough-and-tumble play is lacking (Smith et al. 2015). In this entry, we will consider the evolutionary biological perspective on play development, we will address what playful behavior entails, and finally, we will focus on object play and tool use during the periods.
