The first years of life are among the most important in a person's life. Childhood is a period of physical, mental, emotional and social development. There are many factors that contribute to these developments, such as a nutritious diet, nourishment, emotional support and physical activity, especially play. Play is a very important part of childhood and can be beneficial to a child's development and is the focus of my discussion. First I will describe the four different game types; Secondly, I will discuss the beneficial effects of dramatic play on cognitive and creative abilities by presenting the significant results of two correlation studies and their limitations. Scientists have observed and analyzed numerous types of play that children engage in. The most used categories of play are the four typologies proposed by Sara Smilansky (1968): functional play, constructive play, dramatic play and play with rules (Smith, 1986; Fromberg, 2006). The first of these, functional play, is classified by the simple, repetitive muscular movements that the child makes, "the main objective of which is the movement of an object" (Fromberg, 2006). Examples of this include games in which the child moves a car back and forth, shakes a rattle, bangs a toy, etc. This type of play is common in younger children, typically between birth and two years of age. Functional play helps develop the child's motor skills and hand-eye coordination (Smith, 2003). It also helps children discover how their movements affect their surroundings and learn to use their bodies to do things. However, one of the problems, as proposed by Pellegrini and Smith (1998) in Blades (2003), is that functional play does not necessarily have... half the story... lopment. London: Wiley-Blackwell.Damon, W., Lerner, R.M. (2006). Handbook of child psychology: child psychology in practice. New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons, Inc. Diamond, S., Barnett, J. T., Munroe S. (2007). Preschool program improves cognitive control. Science, 318 (5855), 1387-1388. Fromberg, D. P., Bergen, D. (2006). Play from birth to twelve years: contexts, perspectives and meanings. New York: Routledge.Hutt, C., Bhavnani, R. (1972). Predictions from the game. Nature, 237: 171-172. Smith, Peter K. (1986). Children's play: research developments and practical applications. London: Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, Inc.Tough, P. (2009, September 27). Can the right types of play teach self-control? New York Times, MM31.Wellhousen, K., Kieff, J. E. (2001). A constructivist approach to blocking play in early childhood. Canada: Cengage Learning.