Developing Play Skills

What are the Developmental Levels of Play?

Sensory Exploration (Exploratory Play):

Play is based on the exploration of the world

through the five senses (touch, taste, sight, smell,
and sound), leading to simple manipulation of
objects in the child’s environment. Children who
engage in play on a sensory level may shake toys to
hear what sound they make, move their hands and
feet through a container of sand or beans, or drop
things into a container of water to watch them fall
down.

Cause and Effect (Relational Play):

At this point, children begin to explore multiple features

of a single object and then more than one object, looking
at how the objects relate to each other. This is seen in
putting things together, taking them apart, manipulating
pieces of an object (i.e. buttons), or even a combination
of actions, such as building a tower to knock it down.

Functional Play:

This is a basic or beginning form of pretend play,

where children use objects in the manner they see
from other people. Some examples may be
pretending to eat a toy cookie, giving a toy cookie to
a doll to eat, or giving a toy cookie to Mommy or
Daddy to pretend to eat. This is also seen in play
actions such as putting farm animals into a barn or
driving a car down a road.
Pretend Play (Symbolic Play):

This is a more symbolic form of play where the child uses

an object through actions as if it is alive, uses one object
to represent another, uses imaginary objects, gives
objects imaginary qualities, or takes on imaginary
identities or roles. Some examples are having a doll cook
a meal, pretending a ruler is a spoon to stir pretend cake
batter, pretending he/she has an imaginary spoon to stir
pretend cake batter, pretending that a toy cake pan is
hot, or pretending to be a famous chef.

Developing Play Skills with FITT

Playtime can be challenging for some young children on the autism spectrum. Playtime is
abstract and open ended- it can be unpredictable! We may see children engage in repetitive,
non-functional play activities, such as lining up objects or focusing on small, movable details
(e.g. wheels).

In FITT, we work to help children expand their ability to engage with toys and move through the
developmental levels of play by adding visual structure and supports to toys and play materials
so the child is better able to understand what to do. We want to encourage openness to a
variety of play materials and flexibility in the use of toys. We do this in many ways, such as:

- Choosing materials that are of interest to the child

- Limiting the number of toys available to help your child better focus on what toys are
present
- Organizing toys and materials in a familiar left to right routine
- Teaching play in in a structured format, then moving towards generalization
- Developing multiple routines with toys
- Using photos and pictures to give children new ideas of what to do with toys (e.g. photo
pretend play sequence)