Fantasy play is when children explore and travel through time and space, to interpret experiences into stories and to act them out. Children love this kind of play and it is really important for developing skills which will be used later in life. Today, computers are increasingly present in children's lives, and the development of technology over recent decades has changed the way children play. This thesis explores the possibility of young children (aged 3-4) enacting their fantasy play in a virtual environment. Three different games were designed and implemented on a Mitsubishi DiamondTouch (DT) multi-touch interactive tabletop. Three evaluation studies were conducted and the performance of the children's fantasy play was examined. In each study, children were recruited from a local preschool class. The first study was designed to compare fantasy play in physical and virtual settings. Children from the preschool class in a state primary school were invited to play with both a real tree house and its virtual implementation on a Mitsubishi DiamondTouch (DT) multi-touch interactive tabletop. Overall, the children played quietly and alone. The results evinced several problems in the interaction with the tabletop as children struggled to drag the objects displayed on the table surface. Therefore, the study did not provide conclusive evidence of a distinction in fantasy in physical and virtual environments. The second study was concentrated on testing solutions for the interaction difficulties evinced in the first study. A new application named The Magic House was developed and implemented on a Mitsubishi DT multi-touch interactive tabletop and tested twice with the preschool children. The results showed that most of the interaction problems from Study 1 were eliminated; evidence of more fantasy play was captured, and children played more confidently in the second evaluation session. The third study was designed to investigate and to compare children's fantasy play in physical and virtual settings. A new physical setting and the virtual implementation on the Mitsubishi DT multi-touch interactive tabletop of materials named The Farm were designed and examined with a group of preschool children. The results revealed that high occurrence of fantasy play was observed in the virtual setting and several similarities and dissimilarities between the two settings was also highlighted. Overall, this thesis produced knowledge on how the application on the multi-touch interactive tabletop environment was designed and evaluated with preschool children. The thesis results demonstrate that appropriate interaction design of virtual environments could stimulate preschool children's fantasy play and the tabletop can be operated by children as young as three. This thesis also specified requirements for designing and facilitating tabletop environments for preschool children's fantasy play.

Categorisation is the process by which items, behaviours and events are compartmentalised according to their defining attributes or properties. This may be based on simple perceptual similarities or on more complex conceptual webs. Whatever their selection criteria, categories expedite inferential capabilities, facilitating behavioural predictions and subsequently enabling response. Categorisation waives conscious effort whilst preserving that which is salient and as such, provides a highly efficient means of delineating and organising information within semantic memory. An ability to categorise is therefore fundamental to an individual’s capacity to understand the world and a necessary precursor to academic achievement. This thesis comprises a series of studies that were devised in order to investigate categorisational development in children. Study 1 involved the development of a theoretically and practically valid testing mechanism. A sample of 159 children, aged 30-50 months, participated in a series of investigations aimed at establishing the impact of test format and presentation dimensionality on categorisation performance. As a result of this, a new test battery was devised which enabled more fine grain differentiation than had been possible with the tests used by previous researchers. The battery measured four different aspects of preschool children’s categorisational abilities -categorising according to shape; according to colour; when presented with drawings of items, and when presented with the same items in the form of toys. Results found that children’s ability to categorise differed significantly according to their sex, socio-economic background and the dimensionality of the item. Study 2 utilised the same battery with 190 participants from demographically diverse cohorts. Significant differences were found between high and low socio-economic groups and between boys and girls. A Mixed- Factorial ANOVA, with a post-hoc Bonferroni demonstrated a main effect of sex; a main effect of cohort and an interaction between sex and cohort. A Kruskal-Wallis Test also showed age to be significant, confirming the findings of previous researchers concerning a developmental trajectory. However, it also found that relatively sophisticated conceptual webs emerge earlier than had previously been thought. Whilst the results from Study 2 had demonstrated relative homogeneity amongst socio-economic groups, it was noted that participants from the most disadvantaged neighbourhood performed better than those from the other low socio-economic cohort. As the two Nurseries employed different approaches, with one offering a formal curriculum and the other emphasising child-led play, it was decided that the final study would focus on categorical development in these two cohorts. The final study therefore investigated conceptual development during 96 participants’ first twelve weeks of nursery education. Forty-eight participants were drawn from a Community Nursery with a strong emphasis on child-led play and 48 were drawn from a Nursery attached to a Primary School, where the emphasis was on more formalised learning. Children’s categorisational abilities were measured during their first week in Nursery using the test battery devised for Study 1. They were then re-tested using a matched battery twelve weeks later. Change scores were calculated and analysed using a series of one-way ANOVAs. As anticipated, all participants made gains but the children who had participated in play made significantly greater gains in three out of the four measures. It is thus asserted that play is a key conducer in cognitive development and a causal executant in establishing rudimentary automaticity and, as such, should be the polestar of preschool education. This is particularly important for boys from low socio-economic backgrounds who face contiguous disadvantage. Therefore, this research demonstrates that memory-based research with young children should be conducted with toys and objects, rather than images, and that the link between social and educational stratification has its roots in early childhood and is best addressed through the provision of high-quality play opportunities.

The thesis is focused on phenomenon of free play in preschool age children. Theoretical part of this work explains game itself and its context. Focus is aimed at capturing specifics of preschool age child's play, its importance for kids and division to several types. Major part of this thesis also explains concept of free play in preschool child development. Practical part contains research investigation of free play in children from three to four age in kindergarten. Goal of this investigation was set as follows: give description at free play phenomenon in preschool aged kids in preschool environment. Chosen methods for this research were observation together with non-structured interviews with participants of research - the kids themselves. Research findings describes prevailing types of play and themes that children chose during the free play. Results indicates which toys and tools children use to play with and what kind of relationship they had with them. In addition, children's interactions with others are described and also another features of the free play of preschool children. Key words phenomenon of play, free play, preschool child, preschool enviroment

Syftet med studien är att bidra med kunskap om hur pedagoger i förskolan tar tillvara på den fria leken samt deras syn på fri lek och hur det kan kombineras med lärande. Syftet konkretiseras i två forskningsfrågor som besvaras i studien: ”Hur tar pedagogerna tillvara på barnens fria lek för att möjliggöra lärande?” samt ”På vilket sätt anser pedagogerna att den fria leken kan möjliggöra lärande?”. Insamlad data har analyserats utifrån Deweys och Vygotskijs perspektiv på lärande där begreppenlearning by doing, scaffolding och proximala utvecklingszonen är i fokus. För att få en ökad förståelse om pedagogers användning av barnens fria lek samlas data in med hjälp av deltagande observationer samt semistrukturerade intervjuer. I studien deltar fyra pedagoger från en förskola i södra Sverige. Det framkommer i analysen att pedagogerna som deltar i studien ger barnen utrymme för fri lek under stora delar av dagen samt att de tar tillvara på barnens lek vid flera situationer och på olika sätt. Analysen visar också att pedagogernas användning av den fria leken främst handlar om stöttning och vägledning. Pedagogerna beskriver den fria leken som något barnen själva styr över och beskriver att de lär sig mycket om det sociala samspelet när de leker. Samtliga pedagoger beskriver leken som ett sätt för barnen att bearbeta tidigare upplevelser.

The purpose of our study is to investigate how children interact in play with prepared and non-prepared material respectively to contribute with the knowledge of childrens opportunities for different ways of interaction. The study was performed with a qualitative consisting of observation including video observation and field notes. Two different departments from a preschool in south of Sweden participated in the observations. The theoretical base of the study is a social cultural perspective which in this study means focus on interaction with the material and other children. In the the result it is stated that children use their imagination to give non-prepared material new not foreseen purposes. The symbolic weight of prepared material is the base of how children use it. When children interact with different materials the conditions for different types of interactions and feelings are created. In our study we could see that children themselves prefer play with prepared material however children tend to interact more between the when playing with non-prepared material. / Syftet med vår studie är att undersöka hur barn samspelar i leken medfärdigt respektive ofärdigt material för att bidra med kunskaper om barnsmöjligheter till olika samspel. Undersökningen genomfördes med enkvalitativ metod bestående av observation vilket inkluderadevideoobservation och fältanteckningar. Två olika avdelningar från enförskola i södra Sverige deltog i observationerna. Studiens teoretiskautgångspunkt är sociokulturellt perspektiv vilket i denna studie innebärfokus på samspel med material och med andra barn. I resultatet framgår detatt barn använder sin fantasi för att ge ofärdigt material nya ändamål ochsyften som inte är förutbestämda. Den symboliska vikten i färdigt materialär utgångspunkten till vad barnen gör med materialet. När barnen samspelarmed olika material skapas förutsättningar till olika typer av samspel ochkänslor. I vår studie framkom det att barn själva föredrar lek med färdigtmaterial. Däremot tenderar barnen att samspela mer med varandra när deleker med ofärdigt material.