The United Nations have issued concerns regarding children’s right to play, which is one of the rights that are written in the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989). One prominent concern revolves around how increasing educational requirements push the right to free play aside in order to offer education to children. This study aims to shine light on how preschool teachers in Sweden describes free play, how hey motivate it and how they work with it. This study is based on interviews with five preschool teachers to get their understanding of these questions. By using theoretical concepts of: instutionalization, the threatened play and play enrichment, the information told by the participants have been analyzed.    The result of the study shows that play is rated highly by the teachers and that they motivate it mostly from the perspective of its function to teach. Even though the preschool teachers work in different ways, all of them aspires to foster free play in preschool. However, the study shows that there is a tendency from the adults to only define something as play if they find a purpose in what the children are doing. If they don’t find a purpose in the children’s actions then it is not considered play and gets interrupted by the teacher. This means that there is a risk that some play is not approved by the teachers in preschool, and that the children might be limited in their ways to play.