1 5 Play for Learning and Transition to School Eeva Hujala, Aili Helenius and Pirkko Hyvönen Play has been recognised as essential to children’s learning, but the quality of play has not been adequately defined. Play involves the cognitive, social, emotional and physical. In these, cooperation and interaction between educators, parents, children and their environments is important. Children are considered to be active in their learning. Mature play integrates play with learning and thus is able to convey learning in a form of play. This chapter introduces the contextual orientation of early childhood play, which forms a theoretical basis for mature play. Mature play is defined first, in accordance with teachers and play and learning theories and second, in accordance with children’s views. Finally, mature role-play is discussed from a developmental perspective. Chapter learning objectives Study of this chapter allows the reader to understand that:  contextual orientation forms the basis of play for learning; it comprises three main characteristics: children as active meaning makers, learning as a cooperational process and environments as the context in which playing and learning develop  mature play integrates play with learning and defines the quality of play in early learning contexts; mature play is multifaceted and provides possibilities for embodiment, emotions, collaboration, action, narration, creativity and insight  children’s views emphasise that mature play provides opportunities for various emotional play worlds  mature play is essential and supports children’s transition to school. Let’s pretend that … In a collaborative play situation, one child proposes an important suggestion, ‘Let’s pretend that …’; this illuminates one of the basic ideas of play. Children invite each other to collaborate, they suggest that their peers consider alternative perspectives and