Sensory motor play begins in infancy and lasts to approximately two years in age. In this level of play children engage in motor movements beginning with early reflexes. Most actions are a cause of trial and error or non-purposeful actions. Motor movements include grasping, sucking, pulling items toward their body and moving items in circular motions. The children's actions become more deliberate and purposeful as they get older, with toddlers planning their actions before they do it.
Lasting from approximately age two to age seven, the pre-operational level of cognitive play includes acting out adult roles (i.e., playing house and teacher), pretending to make one item into something else, and performing more symbolic play rather than motor play. Children in this level of play are egocentric and have a hard time sharing toys and thinking of the feelings of others; their perceptions (rather than reality) dictate their judgment.
Constructive play, also called concrete play, is a period of time lasting from seven years to 12 years. Children at this level of play can perform classification tasks, order items in a logical sequence, are able to use problem-solving methods, and have the ability to retrace their cognitive steps. A child's thoughts become more organized into groups, and her thinking becomes more flexible and less fixed. Types of play in this stage involve filling different types of containers of water to see if they all fit the same amount of water. This is the law of conservation which, once mastered, means the child has mastered the concrete level of play.
The last level of play, from age 12 and beyond is the formal play or mastery level play. Children are able to incorporate logic and abstract thought into their play. Thinking becomes less tied to concrete realities and children are able to play more difficult games like chess and trivia games. Children also learn to understand cause and effect of more complicated theories, consider alternate possibilities and concepts, and create and test their own hypotheses. This means that a child may figure that two different types of paper airplanes will fly differently.