Despite having little social contact with their playmate, children who parallel play actually learn quite a bit from one another like taking turns and other social etiquette. Although it appears as though they are not paying attention to each other, they really are. They often mimic one another's behavior. This type of play is considered an important bridge to the later stages of play. (Feldman, 2014).
Preschoolers who display onlooker play are typically working on their developing vocabulary or are younger and want to view the social rules of engagement. Onlooker play is when a child quietly observes other children playing, but does not partake in the event. This aspect of play gives a child social cues about acceptable criteria for behavior to participate in future activities. (Feldman, 2014).
Associative play features a mode of play where each child has a role in which they are involved with one another to complete a project. Consider a scenario where children are making a city with blocks. As they build their individual buildings, they are talking to one another, and engaging each other. During the associate stage of play children develop skills that include; socialization (what should we name our city?) and problem solving (how can we make roads?), cooperation (if we work together we can make our city bigger!) and language development. Their memory capacity has grown because they have watched and learned how to handle different situations.(Feldman, 2014).
In cooperative play, all of the stages come together and children actually start playing with one another. Common in older preschoolers, cooperative play brings together all of the social skills they have been working on and puts them toward group interactions. During cooperative play, children are building a puzzle together, playing a board game, "house" or an outdoor sport with teams. Cooperative play incorporates members of a group that participate in a designated activity.
