ABSTRACT
The ideal of modern Western childhood, with its emphasis on the innocence and malleability of children (Aries, 1962; Fass, 2007), has combined with various social conditions to promote adults’ direction of children’s play towards adult-determined developmental goals, and adult’s protection of children’s play from adults. However, new forms of play, in which adults actively enter into the fantasy play of young children as a means of promoting the development and quality of life of both adults and children, have emerged relatively recently in several countries: Sweden, Serbia, Finland, Japan and the United States (Marjanovic-Shane et al., 2011). These new forms of play, although very different, fit under the umbrella term of playworlds. Because playworlds are unlike other forms of play, they are useful tools for the study of many topics in many fields, as well as for the development of early childhood practice. In this chapter we describe two playworlds and discuss some of the things that we as researchers learned from their development. Further discussion of the theoretical basis of these two playworlds can be found in Ferholt and Nilsson (2014).
