Dr Ludmila Elkoninova - International Council for Children's Play

1.5. Separation of a word from a real object also happens
through object-related actions comprehensible for a child of
this age: a child quickly realizes that a ‘cake’ which he/she
has made out of sand is in fact inedible – and this difference
is once again felt bodily by tasting the cake. The child can
already make jokes, and thus loosens the merge of the word
and the object.
Eventually, at the early age there appears a toy per
se: a child is given to know that one doesn’t play with a bed
pan like with a doll or a toy car. At the end of this age range
a child is able to perform a story with a sequence of
consecutive actions, but this is still not the type of a play,
where he/she intentionally explores and discovers human
relation. This type of a play is the next stage of
development.
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