The purpose of this study is to highlight preschool teacher students' descriptions of using aesthetic qualities as a strategy in play-based teaching with preschool children. Of interest to the study are the drama tools that are actualized in the implementation and those that address the children's initiatives in the process. The students' play-based teaching is also examined in terms of its didactic potential. The research questions focus on the aesthetic strategies actualized in the preschool teacher students' descriptions of implementing play-based teaching with preschool children. Furthermore, how children's initiatives are actualized based on selected aesthetic strategies and what didactic potential the aesthetic strategies used by the preschool teacher students have in play-based teaching with preschool children.  The study adopts a qualitative approach, and interviews are used for data collection. For the analysis of the material, involving four preschool teacher students as informants, a qualitative content analysis is employed. The theoretical concepts of drama, including pre-text, role-taking, dramatic structure, dramatic tension, and interaction (Hallgren, 2018), are used as theoretical foundations. Furthermore, Lindström's (2012, 2015) four aesthetic learning forms, along with their associated leadership styles, are used to analyze the study's results.  The results of the study show that the preschool teacher students' play-based teaching actualized aesthetic strategies such as body language and empathy, narrative, embodiment, and role-taking initiatives, as well as dramatic tension. In many ways, these strategies contributed to creating space for children's initiatives. The ways in which the children in the described teaching situations were challenged in their play skills demonstrate that the use of aesthetic strategies can represent a didactic potential. The results contribute to highlighting aesthetic strategies in combination with targeted questions of a curious and wondering nature as important tools in the play-based teaching of preschool teacher students.