Recreation and Sports Day in Bolivia

Recreational play is a series of intrinsically motivated activities performed for pleasure and enjoyment. Play is commonly associated with children and juvenile-level activities, but play occurs at any stage of life, and also among other higher functioning animals, most notably mammals and birds.

Many prominent researchers in the field of psychology, including Melanie Klein, Jean Piaget, William James, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Lev Vygotsky have erroneously considered play to be limited to the human species, believing that play was important to human development and using different research methods to test their theories.

The act of play is often interpreted as frivolous; however, the player may be intensely focused on his or her goal, especially when the activity is structured and goal-oriented, as in a game. Consequently, play can range from relaxed, free and spontaneous, through frivolous, to planned or even compulsive. Recreational play is not just a pastime activity; it has the potential to serve as an important tool in numerous aspects of daily life for adolescents, adults, and cognitively advanced non-human species (such as primates). Play not only encourages and aids physical development (such as hand-eye coordination), but also aids cognitive development and social skills, and can even serve as a springboard into the world of integration, which can be a very stressful process. Play is something that most children engage in, but the way play is executed is different across cultures and the way children engage in play varies universally.