Chapter 12: If You’Re Not Like Me,Can We Play? : Peer Groups in Preschool

When we think of preschool we often picture children playing together— pretending, running, or making “cakes” in the sandbox. A rich historic and contemporary research literature suggests that early pretend play with peer play is linked to competent social development (Fantuzzo, Sekino, & Cohen, 2004; Howes & Matheson, 1992; Rubin, Bukowski, & Parker, 1998) as well as other areas of development including early literacy and cognitive development (Kavanagh, 2006). In this chapter we are concerned with who plays with whom; who gets to play and who does not; how play groups and playing are organized in preschool classrooms. Our particular focus is on classrooms in which children do not share an ethnic/racial heritage and/or home language and on children who are different in socially stigmatized ways not play styles.