Imagination, Playfulness,
and Creativity in Children’s Playwith Different Toys•
Signe Juhl Møller

Based on a four-month experimental study of preschool children’s play with creative-construction and social-fantasy toys, the author examines the influence ofboth types of toys on the play of preschool children. Her comparative analysis
considers the impact of transformative play on the development of imagination
during play activities and explores ways to support children’s playful initiatives.
She argues that, by transgressing play scenarios, children often develop a more
playful attitude. Toys, imagination, and the setting are important factors in theplay children initiate, and transgressing the immediate play scenario affects eachof these factors. Key words: creative construction; social fantasy; negotiation in
play; transgression and childhood development

An Inquiry into PlayIt is often said that only a fine line separates genius from madness, implying that a limit exists to how far we can transgress rules and norms. Today weunderstand this old saying as expressing the closeness of creativity to deviation.
By adopting Lev S. Vygotsky’s concept of creativity as combining in new ways,
we might bracket the discussion of deviation and turn our attention to transgression, creativity, and the effects of toys on the development of the creative mind.
Many kinds of work require creative skills and innovation. However,one might argue that, for children, creativity produces a feeling that they cancontribute to their surroundings and gives them a sense of control, of being the cocreators of their world. In this article, I discuss how the young develop
creative skills during the various unstructured social situations of childhood.
More broadly, I focus on the role—positive, negative, or neutral—that play withdifferent types of materials has in producing transgressive acts. By transgression,
I mean the novel acts children bring into a play, and I argue that children need
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American Journal of Play, volume 7, number 3 © The Strong
Contact Signe Juhl Møller at Signe.Moeller@psy.ku.dk

Imagination, Playfulness, and Creativity in Children’s Playto transgress the limits of existing play scenarios. In other words, this study
considers the way children use particular materials to explore their creative
imaginations. I understand creative imagination in children’s play to mean the
production of rich combinations we observe when they are externalized.
In Scandinavian kindergartens, which in Denmark involves kids aged three
to six and includes 97 percent of them (DST 2013), children commonly play withtoys everyday. I designed this study to capture the development of children’s playover time and to help analyze the way imagination is linked to the developmentof children’s creativity. The research aims to provide a better understanding of
the relationship between children’s imagination and their creativity by studying
their play with two types of play materials—social-fantasy objects and creativeconstruction toys. The study is both theoretical and experimental. To show how
play externalizes imagination, I link the concept of imagination to the motives
children have to play, and I establish the link as the basis for understanding theway children create motives during play. Imagination is related to playfulness,
which this study defines as a child’s attitude towards change during play. The
study draws on the analytical distinction of children’s focus during play thatIvy Schousboe (2013) introduced as part of her theory of the spheres of reality,
which I integrate into a model of transformative play.
The experimental part this project involved children playing over twomonths with a specific type of toy, lending support to the notion that children
both challenge and build on collective scenarios during play. I examined whether
different types of toys encourage an increase in suggestions about play over time,and I considered the how toys influence the way children play.
This study looks at how children display their creative imaginations so that
we might better understand their motives and activities in relation to specifictypes of toys. The study showed that children’s tendency to develop play scenarios
correlates with the growth of playful attitudes.

Play and Imagination
Vygotsky describes play as leading development during childhood, and he discusses how in imaginary situations, children derive the utmost pleasure from
subordinating themselves to the rules. In other words, we can understand theessential attribute of play in such a way that play rules become the motive foraction (Vygotsky 1978). Given Vygotsky’s emphasis on imagination, play offers

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an opportunity for a child to become a creator of rules and of imaginative playscenarios. During play, children also explore imaginative, creative scenarios theyfind interesting and meaningful. Children employ creative activities and imaginative playfulness (Schousboe 2013) to make everyday activities enjoyable andmeaningful (Alcock 2007; Hedegaard 2012a) and, from a broader perspective,
to experience situational involvement (Olwig 2011).
When children play, whether at home, in kindergarten, or elsewhere, we
observe imagination externalized into action (Vygotsky 1967). During play,children establish play scenarios to perform their imagined and otherwise unrealizable desires: “Play is such that the explanation for it must always be that it is
the imaginary, illusory realization of unrealizable desires” (7–8). In this study,
I understand an individual’s desires as an individual’s motives. Leontiev (1978)
talks about a distinction between primary (biological) needs and needs on a
personal level. For the purposes of this study, I will use the term needs only inthis latter sense. (For an in-depth discussion of needs and motives, see Davydov,
Zinchenko, and Talyziana 1983; Leontiev 1978; Hedegaard 2012a). From thisperspective, play is the externalization of imagination into action, and—following Vygotsky—in this study, imagination entails the fulfillment of needs, which
are defined as motives for action (Vygotsky 1978; Hedegaard 2012a). Children,in their quotidian lives, inhabit social situations that remain constant, day in andday out. These recurrent social structures do not leave room for a child to act
out all his or her desires. In this sense, play is directed by needs a child cannot
meet immediately. Instead, these needs are figuratively addressed during play.
Thus, a child’s directedness is focused toward that which is outside the recurrent structures of everyday life and its practices and leads potentially to acts in
response to these structures and practices.
On a phylogenetic level, Vygotsky (1997) notes that humankind actively
adapts the environment to its needs. On an ontogenetic level, imagination develops as a psychological function throughout a lifespan and depends on experience. As a higher mental function, imagination involves consciously directedthought processes that are also developed in play when children negotiate andformulate play rules.
When children play with toys, the meaning of an object can change, as canchildren’s perceptions and use of objects (Wartofsky 1979). These perceptions
and uses may violate the rules and norms outside or inside the play activity,
thereby leading to novel uses of an object. The meaning of objects is a central
point in Vygotsky’s conceptualization of the relation between play and imagina-

Imagination, Playfulness, and Creativity in Children’s Playtion (Vygotsky 1967, 1990, 2004). During play activity, a child might use one
object as a substitute for another. Thus, play is “a novel form of behavior inwhich the child is liberated from situational constraints through his activity inan imaginary situation” (1967, 11).
Using Vygotsky’s argument that a child changes the meaning of an object (atoy) during play, we can adopt Wartofsky’s (1979) theory of perception to engage
the concept of pivot (Vygotsky 1967) as the use of an object for production andcommunication in relation to rules outside the play activity. Elsewhere (Møller,
in press), I argue that creation in children’s play is the motive for establishinga play scenario. The development of the play scenario is transformed when theconstraints of the play scenario, such as the perceived possible uses of an artifact
or the rules, are transgressed and children’s motives and imagination lead theactivity.
In what follows, I present imagination as a key aspect of development
within play. I understand imagination as being intertwined with creative activity, which I conceptualize in relation to spheres of reality and the developmentof playfulness. I address the development of children’s imagination through thetransgression of play scenarios (i.e., children’s transformative play) and connect
children’s creativity to the development of their thinking (Vygotsky 1990).

Conceptualizing Imagination in Relation
to the Spheres of Reality
We understand children’s challenging and transgressional activities as conditions for the maintenance of a broader and more flexible spectrum of managing
possible changes, “the result of which is not reproductions of what happened inexperience but the creation of new forms or activity” (Vygotsky 1967, 5). Thismay be the case when children explore individual ideas within a social setting(such as play) as well as in adult settings. Consistent with this notion, scholars
have argued that play is important in the development of children’s planningskills and their coordination of plans with others (Barker-Sennett, Matusov, andRogoff 1992, 2008; Göncü 1993).
To study children’s imagination in fantasy play, Schousboe (2013) formeda theory based on the direction of children’s focus during play. She draws ananalytic distinction between three spheres—imagination, staging, and reality.
These spheres exist in dynamic interchange and are always present simultane-

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ously; that is, children are never caught up in only one of these spheres. Bothadults and children know that play and reality differ. When Sørensen (2013) asks
two children about their play on a climbing frame, the children answer, “We are
not playing, we are practicing.” However, both adults and children know that
this is a fine line. The analytical concepts (i.e., imagination, staging, and reality)
can be understood as modes of an individual’s relations with the world. These
do not cease to exist when children leave childhood; from a developmental
perspective, the sphere of staging contains a creative, imaginative perspective
consistent with an adult world based on agreed-upon rules and myths (Lyotard
1984). By embracing this perspective, we can understand children’s play (in its
different developmental periods) and adult play as mutually interdependent.
Furthermore, the perspective might rise from an individual level to a relational level that involves playing or developing a playful attitude. We might
consider the conditions for children’s acceptance of changes in play scenarios
in relation to playfulness. Thus, playfulness relates to transgressions and theacceptance of changes in play scenarios.

The Development of Playfulness and Creativity
through Transgressions
Novelty and playfulness, in combination with engagement, lead children totransgress and return to a play scenario repeatedly in such a way that the playchanges character. This process facilitates the transformation of both the playscenario and the function of perceived objects, which feeds back into the playscenario, creatively developing the play (Wartofsky 1979; Vygotsky 1967).
Transformative play entails a developmental condition in which children canimaginatively try out suggestions. When it is introduced, this condition may betransgressive from the perspective of the play scenario. Children can therefore
work with their imaginations based on the rudiments of ideas before taking a
position to act out these ideas. An example from the play group study involves
the combination of a hairdressing salon with a veterinary practice. Using Wartofsky’s theory (1979) of artifacts as mediating the relations between a person andobjects, we can observe how children use artifacts in their imagination while
externalizing their understanding of the world through communicative andproductive acts. The play group can then evaluate these acts during play andreject or build on them. By acting out novel forms of play, these acts becomeImagination, Playfulness, and Creativity in Children’s Playpart of a child’s repertoire, which might be expressed or acted out in real-lifesituations. Thus, these acts transgress the play scenario, which initially supports
the child’s work on the artifact and “constitute[s] a domain in which there is afree construction in the imagination of rules and operations different from thoseadopted for ordinary ‘this-worldly’ praxis” (209).
As shown in figure 1, we might understand transformative play as functioning in several dimensions. In a basic sense, it opens up the play scenario
for new and creative acts as the prerequisite for transgressing its norms andrules. We can understand this as playfulness. On the group level (negotiation),
playfulness functions as a prerequisite for transgressions transforming the playscenario. From this perspective, an individual child’s initiation of novel acts

Figure 1. Model showing how children’s transgressional acts transformplay scenarios

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meet the group’s understanding of the play scenario and the collective understanding of the possibility of changing this scenario. We can observe this sharedunderstanding in negotiations regarding the introduction of novel play acts,
including both explicit negotiation through verbal communication and tacit
acceptance or rejection of the novel acts. Playfulness is therefore understood asa willingness to affirm transgressive acts, thereby transforming the play scenario
such that the transgression can be included in the play scenario to ensure thecontinuation of the play.
Rules can be determined negatively by observing acts. For example, whenchildren act in such a way that other children reject that act (either verballyor simply by not repeating that act), we determine a negative limit of the playscenario and thus of the rules governing it. Likewise, when an act leads to anegotiation of that act, it is categorized as transgressive and negatively defines
the rules of the scenario. While playing, children thereby establish, negotiate,
re-create, and explain rules and roles observed in their everyday lives (Packer
1994; Sutton-Smith 1997).
On a larger scale, consider Pablo Picasso’s display of creative imagination and the transgression of rules and norms. After painting within theestablished tradition, he introduced cubism, in which he creatively combined
traditional styles (perspective) in new ways, deconstructing and reconstructing the surface perspective. At the same time, this was a transgression of the
traditional rules of painting. He thereby negotiated new rules for painting
by re-creating and expanding the domain of painting and our ways of looking at art.
I undertook a four-month experimental play group study that examineddifferences in the use of toys and the ways toys influence children’s interactions
during play. The toys were carefully selected to support either creative construction or social fantasy play.

Design and Data Collection
Initially, I conducted a one-month ethnographic prestudy in which I participated in the children’s daily life in kindergartens. The study took place at typicalDanish kindergartens. Children spend most of their waking life in kindergartens (Olwig 2011). Hence, the role of kindergarten, according to Gulløv andHøjlund (2005), works as a socializing agent. Everyday kindergarten life isImagination, Playfulness, and Creativity in Children’s Play

structured around an organized timetable and individual physical spaces thatfacilitate discipline but also involve a tradition of “an adult-child relationshipof interdependence that allows for—even necessitates—a great deal of give andtake, as both parties negotiate their understanding of the civilizing process
and the terms under which it can unfold” (Olwig 2011, 125). This give andtake, this ongoing negotiation between children and adults, gives the children
a sense of the kindergarten as a place of their own.
In the kindergartens, I tried to appear relaxed to let the professionals (e.g.,
the kindergarten teachers who assisted me in forming groups and confirming
the children’s consent) know I valued their knowledge and, at the same time, I
attempted to make a positive impression on the children. I based my approachon ethnographic work about how to obtain access as the “children’s researcher”(Emond 2006; Bang 2010; Hedegaard, pers. comm.). I introduced myself as anadult who was interested in play and who intended to join the children later ina play project. In Danish kindergartens, children are accustomed to the presence of teaching students who join them during their training period (e.g., toperform “play and learn” projects) and kindergarten teachers or assistants wholead various workshops in such activities as decorating Easter eggs or making
Christmas gifts. In the prestudy, I used an interaction-based research method(Hedegaard and Fleer 2008; Hedegaard 2012b; Bang 2008, 2010) that focused on
the relations between the children, objects, and settings. The method included
written interaction-based observation with the subsequent application of video
recordings instead of written notes and the use of photos and additional fieldnotes to inform the play project. I did not use a tripod or unassisted camera
to avoid imposing a feeling of intimidation or surveillance among the children(Ratcliff 2007). After I obtained parental consent, the study relied on interactionbased video recordings along with photos and supplementary protocol notes(Raitilla 2012; Emond 2006; Fleer 2012; Goldman 2007) until the experimental
portion of the play project. Given my interaction as a researcher with the children, I always kept the camera within their reach, even when I turned it off andput it down. This allowed me, even as researcher, to remain an interested adult(Fleer and Peers 2012). In addition, I never covered my face or distanced myself.
If the children asked me for the camera to initiate their own recordings at any
time during the four-month period, I handed them the camera with a short
introduction. Thus, sporadic child-directed recordings are present throughout
the two-month period.
The duration of the experimental play group project (shown in figure 2)

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encompassed eight weeks. The project included three groups of children (nomore than five in a group) playing with creative-construction toys (e.g., LEGO
sets, wooden blocks, and train tracks) and three groups playing with socialfantasy toys (e.g., costumes, fantasy figurines, and teddy bears) twice a week.
Kindergarten teachers assembled the six groups by drawing on their knowledgeof the children’s relations to make the individuals in the groups comparable.
When assembled, the groups remained fixed for the duration of the project.
I instructed the kindergarten teachers not to compose groups of close friends
because research has shown that there is a close connection between the degreeof friendship, the quality of play, and children’s immersion in play (Sawyer 2009).
The two chosen kindergartens, like most Danish kindergartens, did not divide
children by gender when planning daily activities. However, to ensure an equal
distribution of boys and girls, I asked the kindergarten teachers to form groupsof either three boys and two girls or three girls and two boys. In total, sevengirls and eight boys played with the social-fantasy toys and seven boys and eight
girls played with the creative-construction toys throughout the duration of theexperimental play group project.
I determined the group size of five children in collaboration with kinder-

Figure 2. Overview of experimental play group projectImagination, Playfulness, and Creativity in Children’s Playgarten teachers. Because I, as the researcher, was responsible for the children,
this produced a group size that allowed me to maintain the children’s well-being
during the sessions. The children were free to leave at their own discretion, andthey could bring their own toys if they wished. However, this only happenedon two occasions, once when two children each brought a toy, and once whena child brought a teddy bear that she kept by her side during the session. The
sessions lasted approximately one hour. Every second week, the toys used (within
the types) were changed. New features were added to the toys every week tomaintain a more ecological environment (with the empty room resembling alaboratory setting) and to motivate the children and keep the play interestingfor them (e.g., using music, movement, or colors).
To support the experience of challenging and building upon collective
scenarios during play within the project, the children played twice a week ingroups for approximately one hour for ten weeks. To explore the effect of different materials on play, the toys were categorized into social-fantasy and creativeconstruction toys. I performed a statistical analysis on video data retrieved when
the children had been playing for eight weeks.

Analysis
The analysis investigated whether a difference existed in the children’s display ofcreative imagination between the two different types of toys. I selected the data
presented in this article from the entire collection of observations and interviews. These data demonstrate examples of creative initiatives and possibilities
for increasing the duration and development of play scenarios.

Recoding and Retrieving Video Observations
The data collection of documents, field notes, still pictures, recorded interviews
with edited sample collages from the group interviews, and the protocol wereassembled concurrently. I recorded categories directly in the video strings inrelation to various play styles (i.e., fantasy play, role play, creative-construction
play, and game play). These categories became the basis for subsequent levelsof analysis and led to the retranscription of the retrieved videos for comparative analysis.
I selected the third play session in each two-week period for further analysis
because that was when I added new toys. At that point, the children had been

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playing with the toys from the two previous sessions. Each time the toys werechanged in the first two play sessions, the change was modeled on a typical controlled study with only one type of toy present. In the third session, something
new but similar was added to form a more ecological sample. These four playsessions (a third session out of four sessions with the same category of toys)
were condensed into video collages for each of the six groups. I retrieved andtranscribed the third play periods in every four sessions in detail to create acomparable collage to follow the development over time. I retrieved the four
play periods for each of the six groups at the same session in the time span of
the project, concentrating on twenty-minute segments taken from each session
after fifteen minutes of play. These samples were retrieved and edited to form
a combined collage. The collages were examined group by group, focusing oncrisis and play episodes. The results were discussed based on theoretical andempirical considerations regarding the categories of play.
The analysis merged overview protocols, including the selection of the play
categories, using previous elements of analysis to describe the similarities to theoverall observations. We discussed these protocols and created a data sheet that
included the protocol and highlights from the analytical focus of the research
protocol and the transcriptions.

Statistical Analysis
For the statistical analysis, I and an independent researcher in philosophy ofeducation separately analyzed and categorized the collected data. We separately
viewed the condensed video collages and marked the play categories of eachplay scenario on a worksheet that included all the categories. The two of us discussed the usefulness of the categories and the coding process. Disagreements
in coding led to discussion. The foundation for further analysis of the observations consisted of theoretically suggested categories, categories that arose outof the analysis, and important observations that were treated in previous levelsof the analysis. The two of us explored and investigated occurrences of essential
categories to identify differences with regard to creativity, playfulness, and thedevelopment of the play scenario.
I retrieved types of frequently occurring acts for detailed analysis and usedthem to represent differences within the data of the two groups. These differences represent the major findings of the experimental portion of the project.

Imagination, Playfulness, and Creativity in Children’s Play

Strategy of the Analysis
In this section, I investigate the categories that emerged from my study of new
play acts and transformative play. In observing the children’s play, I found theconcepts of communication and the production of the object-meaning relation
essential to fostering the development of imagination and creative activities inchildren’s play. I highlighted these primary categories in the transcribed video
material and analyzed them statistically. Table 1 presents significant categories.
The analysis included each of the six groups of children and their play activities
within the four detailed transcribed video collages. Other categories include:
external and internal group invitations, assistance, conflict, sorting, deorganization, groupings and single play, exclusion, singing, and chatting. Given my

The spheres

Imagination: When children focus on the sphere of imagination. Children
construct a play scenario and continue to refer to artifacts constructed in
the play scenario.
Negotiation: When children focus on negotiating. These negotiations canrefer to both real-world negotiations and constructions and to the playscenario or a future play scenario such as, rules, the meaning of artifacts,
acts, and themes.
Reality: When children refer to real-life chatting or discuss facts with norelation within the other play spheres.

Pivot

Production: When an understanding of an artifact is presented through anonverbal act or a series of acts.
Communication: When an understanding of an artifact is presented
through a verbal act or a series of acts.

Transformativeplay

Rejection: When something offered is rejected such as, something new, an
invitation, or an interpretation of the play rules.
Acceptance: When something offered is accepted, such as something new,an invitation, or an interpretation of the play rules. This can also refer tononplay activities.

New play acts

Novelty: When something not previously introduced in the play session ispresented in relation to a play scenario.
Transgression: When something that transgresses the play rules of acurrent play scenario is introduced.

Table 1. Categories used for the analysis of children’s play with toys

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limited the scope in this article, I do not present these latter categories here.
With the help of another researcher, I marked and noted separately novel
play acts, transgressive play acts, and acts implying a focus on one of Schousboe’s
three spheres of imagination, staging, and reality. We recorded these acts in a data
worksheet and subsequently conducted T-tests for each of the values to reveal significant differences in the children’s play. We found significant differences between
the two variations (construction-play toys and social-fantasy play toys).
This analysis defined the child’s and play group’s focus in accordance withthe analytical categories I took from Schousboe. By definition, children are neverexclusively directed toward just one sphere; elements of the spheres of imagination, staging, and reality are always present simultaneously. For this reason, I did
not consider in the analysis a child’s focus in terms of a specific sphere. Instead,
I look at a child’s predominant focus in relation to these spheres.
The concept of pivot was employed using Wartofsky’s theory of perception.
Likewise the notion of new play acts was used, through the concepts of novelty
and transgression, to refer to the way children build upon each other’s suggestions.
In relation to the category of transgression, the rules were determined
negatively by identifying (1) responses leading to a transformation of the playscenario, for which the rules were determined retrospectively by the researcher;(2) acts leading to negotiations; and (3) acts leading to an explicit verbal rejection or the children implicitly ignoring the act.

Results
Imagination
In accordance with the quantification of the observations, the social-fantasy

N

Mean

Standard deviation

P

0.029

3

Social fantasy

173

47.17

3

Creative construction

74

20

Table 2. Mean of acts performed by children with a focus on imagination

Imagination, Playfulness, and Creativity in Children’s PlayTime Name Utterance
57 03.05 Irene

Description

Is sitting with a pair of fairy
And then... I will fly withwings, which she throws on
summer-wings if anything
the floor; she then starts togoes awry and my summer
clothes, because I have to. But investigate the pile of toys she
has gathered
just remember to bring theclothes back home again.

58 03.15 Victoria Yes, If I crash when I am

Imagination, new,communication

Imagination,
acceptance, newgoing home, then, then you
will call the fire department,right?

59 03.22 Irene

Analytical category

Imagination,
acceptanceYes and...

60 03.23 Victoria ...when I call.
61 03.24 Irene

Yes then, then quickly, then I
say that they must come andget you before you drownwith your wings.

Imagination

62 03.32 Victoria Yes, and my wings...
63 03.33 Johan Or I will axe the crocodiles

Looks at Victoria, then at Irene

Imagination

to pieces.

64 03.36 Victoria I already have an axe. Then, I

Imagination

also just need to...

65 03.40 Johan Then, conjure it into a girl

Imagination, newVictoria. Conjure it into a
girl, the crocodile.

66 03.46 Victoria But I have to get the axe. I

Imagination

would rather have my axe
instead and hit....

67 03.53 Irene

Well, for you it is now sleepy- Looks at Johantime.

Imagination

Table 3. Play scenario, factory group 1, social-fantasy toys,costume session 3, 12/07/2011group primarily focused on the sphere of imagination, as shown in the statisticalanalysis presented in table 2.

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Regarding the category referred to as imagination (a primary focus on
the sphere of imagination), the social-fantasy groups presented a significantly
higher mean score (173, SD 47, with a range of 94) than the creative-constructiongroups (74, SD 20, with a range of 40) (t(4) = -3.34, p = 0.029).
A qualitative example follows to elaborate on the statistical finding. In
fantasy-play example 1, the use of negotiation is less predominant within thesphere of imagination. The social-fantasy group scenarios included negotiations,but the children’s focus did not change from the sphere of imagination.
Example —Participants: Victoria, Irene, and Johan. The
group began a role-playing game that became fantasy play. Victoria, the bigsister fairy, went to a disco in a clock tower while her mother (Irene) and baby

Figure 3. Factory group 1, social-fantasy playImagination, Playfulness, and Creativity in Children’s Playbrother (Johan) remained at home on a mobile connection, ready to assist her
if she crashed into a crocodile pit on her way (see table 3).
In the example of imagination within social-fantasy play presented here,
many new aspects are introduced. However, the negotiation of these aspects
is brief, and the children retain their focus on the sphere of imagination whilenegotiating. The scenario develops with the aim of continuing the play. Although
the children negotiate (lines 57, 58, and 59), this negotiation is conducted using
a simple “yes,” building directly on the novel or transgressive suggestions of theother children.
Playful initiatives are often initially accepted and supported within thegroup; however, they are often not developed further, and the children sometimes even neglect them within the continued play activity. Nevertheless, children’s suggestions become more frequent, and the likelihood of rejection is low
unless the sphere of staging undergoes a change of focus. While playing, children introduce what they find pertinent, such as wishes, ideas, or, according
to Vygotsky (1967), needs they would like to fulfill but cannot. It is clear that aplayful attitude is analytically linked to the categories of novelty and transgression, enabling children to introduce wishes, ideas, and unfulfilled needs. The
focus on the sphere of imagination within the development of play leads to anincrease in the introduction and negotiation of new rules.

Communication and Production
Within each session, I categorized as novelty any acts that were presented
through the use of objects and used to build on the other children’s imaginative
scenarios without challenging the established play rules. I categorized acts that

N

Mean

Standard deviation

P

0.026

3

Social fantasy

68

17.06

3

Creative construction

28

10.21

Table 4. Mean of acts performed by children with a focus on communicationand production

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violate rules within the play activity or norms as transgression. The results of
the reported observations are presented below.
The expression of an object’s function, referred to as pivot (categorized
as communication and production), has a significantly higher mean (68, SD
17.06, with a range of 33) in the social-fantasy group than in the creativeconstruction group (28, SD 10.21, with a range of 19) (t[4] = -3.46, p = 0.026).
This difference correlates to a significantly higher mean with regard to thefocus on the sphere of imagination in comparison with the social-fantasy andcreative-construction groups (see table 4).
Production and communication were used to describe how an object’s
meaning was presented to the group by referring to the way in which children’s
acts were analyzed in each session. The role that the child fulfills and his or her
relation to an object (if the object has changed its meaning) always stems froma relation to the rules. An example of this is presented in table 5.
Time Name Utterance

Description

Analytical category

Johan is lying down
making baby noises while
Irene speaks to him.
Victoria goes back to thelower right corner of theroom and sits down.

Imagination,
production,communication

142 09.00 Johan Yes.

Irene and Johan crawl out
from under the desk.

Imagination,
production

143 09.01 Irene

Irene picks up the mobile
Imagination, new,phone and points it straight production
out while she pushes
buttons on it.

141 08.35 Irene

144 09.14 Johan

It is also that you did not havea midday nap today. That is
why you can’t sleep... then you
can’t sleep now. Do you want
to watch some more telly, doyou? Do you want to watch
some Spiderman?

Yes, then we will just flickover to Spiderman (making
channel-shifting sound).

Talks baby talk and points
to where Victoria is playing
but also in the directionof the imagined TV at thesame time.

Table 5. Play scenario, factory group 1, social-fantasy toys,costume session 3, 12/07/2011

Imagination,
acceptance,
production,communication

Imagination, Playfulness, and Creativity in Children’s Play

Example —Participants: Victoria, Irene, and Johan. The
three are engaging in fantasy play, with the older fairy sister (Victoria) attending a ball in the clock tower. Meanwhile, her mother (Irene) is tucking the baby
(Johan) in at home.
In the example, Irene is talking about turning on a TV while pointing amobile phone in the direction of the imagined TV and verbalizing a clicking
sound. Through her act, she makes the mobile phone into a remote control for
the TV, thereby changing the use of the object. She would have been using communication if she had said, “This is the remote control for the TV” because thisspeech act would indicate how she was using the mobile phone.

Negotiating Transgression
Another group of the categories involve negotiation. It was not as pronounced
in the statistical analysis but still varied to a noteworthy degree in the twoplay groups.
For the categories called negotiation, the social fantasy groups presented a considerably higher mean (68, SD 22.07, with a range of 26) thanthe creative construction groups (42, SD 13.45, with a range of 44) (t(4) =1.74, p = 0.156; see table 6).
Novelty is an instance in which a child introduces a new element to the playscenario that complies with the rules of that scenario, whereas transgressions are
instances in which a child introduces an element to the scenario that challenges
that play scenario by transgressing the implicit or explicit play rules. Transgression is always followed by negotiation, which does not necessarily imply a shiftof focus to the sphere of staging. The child’s knowledge or sense of the rules

N

Mean

Standard deviation

P

0.156

3

Social fantasy

42

13.45

3

Creative construction

68

22.07

Table 6. Mean of acts performed by children with a focus on negotiation

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Time Name Utterance

Description

Analytical category

01.28 Georg Okay, and then there should

Georg places a blue blockand takes away the lighter
block, which he placed
earlier.

Negotiation,
acceptance, new,production

Albert removes the blue
block Georg just placed.
Georg then carefully tries
placing the lighter block.
After the exclamation,
Georg pulls back and justsits and stares at Albert,
who continues the construction, while he holds a
handful of black blocks in
his hand and a single light
blue block.

Rejection

also...Can we use a blue
inside then?

21

01.36 Albert No, NO, no, NOOOO,
Georg, you are always doing
the wrong thing!

Table 7. Play scenario, garden group 2, creative-construction toys, wooden blocks
session 3, 11/28/2011

governing the play may be such that he or she does not know that a performed
act is actually transgressive for the group; that is, a child might believe that theact complies with the rules.
Notice that new transgressive acts are not always reflected in and easily
integrated into a play session because they change significant aspects of the playscenario. Example 4, in which the children are playing with creative-construction
toys, clearly demonstrates this difficulty. It is not clear whether Georg himself
sees the act as transgressive or if he is attempting to produce his understandingof the current play rules (at the point in line 20 in table 7 when he places a blue
block in the foundation of the house that he and Albert are building).
Example . Participants: Albert, Georg, Marie, Kim, and Ziggem. Albert and Georg have decided to build a house. In this situation, Georg
likely thinks he is producing a meaningful act within the play activity without
regarding his suggestion as transgressive to the play scenario. It is clear that for
Albert, however, Georg’s suggestion is a transgressive act. This interpretation
becomes very clear in the way Albert reacts by rejecting Georg’s productions(line 21). Having to accept this act as meaningful in the activity would mean that

Imagination, Playfulness, and Creativity in Children’s Play

Albert would have to change his plan for the project. This interchange implies
that the children do not understand that the material for construction play is
open ended, as might otherwise be assumed (e.g., by the way in which building blocks and LEGO sets are marketed). In accordance with the quantitative
analysis, the social-fantasy play groups focused on the sphere of imagination,
whereas the creative-construction toy groups focused on negotiating the termsof the construction or the play scenario rather than on the sphere of imagination.
When children played with the creative-construction toys, I frequently
observed a specific cycle. For example, when Albert and Georg focused on thesphere of imagination, they returned shortly after to focus on the sphere of reality
or staging. By contrast, in the example of the fantasy-play group, a clear focus on
the sphere of imagination aided the creation of an elaborate, constantly evolving
storyline. The degree of engagement I observed, reflected in the multiplicity of
categorical acts during the play activity, left almost no room for the children to
be distracted or to shift focus to the sphere of staging. Instead, the most noveland even transgressive suggestions were negotiated by being repeated by others
and were thus tacitly accepted into the play scenario.

Discussion
Accepting Transgressions of the Play Scenario
For the creative-construction toy groups, it is noticeable that the negotiationof the rules was, to a high degree, settled early during the play session (e.g.,when it was decided that Albert and Georg would build a house). This was
also apparent in the example of Albert and Georg, in which few new suggestions were accepted. In creative-construction play, children often play alone
or in smaller groups. In these smaller groups, the same children usually reject
initiatives proposed by others, indicating that they have a plan for the construction that they attempt to put into effect. This pattern establishes a play activity that does not encourage other children to add suggestions, which might
encourage children to divide into smaller groups. The children involved may
even discourage other children from being playful in a transgressional sense
within the group, thereby limiting the scope of possible new acts. Suggestions
from children who do not lead the activity appear to transgress the play rules,
inadvertently leading to rejection and negatively constituting the play rules.
Further, this pattern builds on the indication that a plan of construction is

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present and is negotiated early in the session by one or two of the children. It
can be argued that the majority of the children’s playful suggestions are notactual transgressions but are merely novel in the sense that they elaborate on
and explicate the given rules. By not having a clear goal and making things
up as they go along, children playing with social-fantasy toys appear to havea broader scope for accepting novelty and transgression in the play scenario.
These groups prove to be more playful in a transgressive sense. Supported by
the material and the typical type of play suggested within this play style, thefocus on relations allows each child to express what he or she finds pertinenteven though, as argued earlier, these suggestions are not always adopted by
the group. In accordance with Vygotsky, what children find pertinent is given
more room to unfold in these groups. In cases in which the group no longer
finds these suggestions interesting in relation to the play scenario, they are
not repeated.

Transgression
For the social-fantasy group, a superfluous focus on the imaginative spherekeeps the play going. The acceptance of transgressions maintains the focus
on the sphere of imagination, leading the play scenario to change throughout
the session as it develops (in example 1) from a simple role-playing gameabout mothers and children to include fantasy stories. For example, Victoria
suddenly introduces an alligator pit into the play, thereby changing the possibilities for the content of the entire play scenario. Although this change
does not lead to an entirely new theme, it does lead to a set of new playrules that are used in conjunction with the old play rules. These new playrules are integrated with the old rules, creating a much broader space formeaningful acts within the play scenario. Here, the play scenario becomes a
mixture of mother and child roles and a fairy tale involving a fairy princess
flying to a ball in a tower, which leads to a radical change in the role of themother. The mother must also be able to fly; therefore, the girl playing themother finds fairy wings to rescue the daughter if the daughter calls her on
her mobile phone. In relation to negotiation, this concrete transgressive act
was conjured by communication. Irene exhibits only a very brief pause before
she reacts by building on the newly changed play scenario. Instead of shifting her focus to the sphere of staging, Irene almost instantly reestablishes
the play scenario as meaningful, and the transgressive act now makes sense
within the transformed play scenario.

Imagination, Playfulness, and Creativity in Children’s Play

Conclusion: The Development of Playfulness
and the Importance of Setting
I have argued that the concepts of transgression and novelty are intertwined withplayfulness. In this study, when children suggested something new within theplay scenario without questioning the rules of the play but instead attempting
to avoid challenging their own rules or rules set by others, they did not develop
the play scenario; at most, they elaborated on the existing play scenario. The
elaboration deepened the scenario and made the rules explicit and more defined
but rarely added new aspects. Such an approach was typical for the creativeconstruction groups.
The situation in which one child or a few children lead or plan the play
indicates a change in the dynamic with respect to the ways in which other children’s transgressions function to confirm play rules through rejection in thecreative-construction groups. Here, transgressions function by clarifying therules and play criteria, leading to a more well-defined play scenario that includes
more explicit rules (although these rules are defined negatively). In accordancewith the significant measures found in the quantitative data analysis, groups
that played with social-fantasy toys employed more object-meaning acts andimaginative suggestions within the play scenarios. This finding contrasts withthe findings for the children who played with creative-construction toys. The
latter group of children used a large part of their play sessions to focus on thesphere of staging and explicating the rules and goals of the play scenario. The
creative-construction groups were more engaged in negotiations and remained
focused on the sphere of staging during play. In this case, the coordination ofplans with others was not part of a shared imaginative scenario but was directedby only a few children. The findings presented here demonstrate that the children
remained focused on different spheres depending on the type of toy with which
they played. The children who engaged in creative-construction play referredto the goals, rules, and regulations of the play during negotiation, whereas thechildren who played with social-fantasy toys developed the rules of the play scenario rather than referring to the existing rules. Activities such as social-fantasy
play call attention to the negotiation of creative initiatives while retaining a focus
on the shared scenario. Compared with play activities that are not focused onchildren’s initiatives, social-fantasy play activities support creative imagination.
Drawing on the results, I propose that playful transgressions in transformative play can be related to creating a sense of a situation as one’s own. This

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finding emphasizes the importance of the experience of making transgressions
and negations within kindergarten as well as in a broader perspective, suggesting
the possibility exists to transgress the limits of traditions. The notion of creativetransgressions that emerge through children’s play while negotiating and introducing novel or transgressive acts is important for a child’s sense of belonging,of being part of a setting. This finding may warrant further study, especiallyconsidering children’s engagement or lack thereof in a school setting. Linking
this observation to the findings, the difference in the types of negotiations andtransgressions experienced in the play scenarios seems to be that playing withcreative-construction toys leads to a sense that rules are static and are to be
explored and revealed through negotiations. In this context, transgressions function as a negative determination of rules. In contrast, play with social-fantasy
toys leads to a more playful attitude towards transgressive acts that entails asense of rules as something dynamically created—they are something of one’s
own shared by others.

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