This article analyses the construction of the social meaning of play in a particular preschool group of children, five boys and five girls. To do that children's mothers and teachers were interviewed to define their conceptions about play. After, children were filmed for twenty minutes while playing, both at home and in school, in order to analise how children organize their activities. Content analysis of interviews and the categorization of children's play show that play activities are structured differently by gender and the context where play occurs. The microanalysis of the videotapes of four children's play explicit that they actively reconstruct play, building news scenarios, and inventing new functions for existing objects in the culture. Children do that by redifining sexual roles stereotyped as masculine, feminine and undiferentiated by sociocultural context.
sociocultural; play; culture
