Creative Education, 2018, 9, 1794-1807 http://www.scirp.org/journal/ce ISSN Online: 2151-4771 ISSN Print: 2151-4755 DOI: 10.4236/ce.2018.912130 Sep. 10, 2018 1794 Creative Education Play and Preschool Children Who Are Deaf: A Review of the Literature Millicent Musyoka Lamar University, Beaumont, USA Abstract The purpose of this study was to provide a narrative review of the literature of studies on deaf children play. Electronic searches of databases including EBSCOhost, ERIC, Deaf Education related journals, and Google Scholar were undertaken using terms such as deaf play, deaf play and literacy, deaf play and school and deaf play and language, deaf play and cognition. Relevant ar- ticles on the deaf children play extracted were synthesized narratively. The results of the analysis were interpreted using descriptive analysis, percentages, frequencies and emerging themes. The data showed most of the studies fo- cused on comparing deaf children play behaviors to those of the hearing peers. Findings on deaf children social and cognitive play were inconsistent. Several issues in this analysis point to implications for future research, teach- er preparation and teacher intentionality in the implementation of play in early childhood education (ECE) classrooms. Keywords Deaf, Children Play, Deaf Children Play, Deaf Children Interactions 1. Introduction Supporting language and literacy development among young children who are deaf is a critical issue for deaf educators (Allen, Letteri, & Choi, 2014; Golos & Moses, 2013; Gray, 1995; Mayer, 2007; Musyoka, 2015; Williams, 2004). Early language access is reported as a significant factor that creates literacy challenges and literacy gaps among most of the students who are deaf (Freel et al., 2011; Myers et al., 2010). Attending to literacy needs of students who are deaf is criti- cal because the previous literature shows that most them tend to graduate read- ing and fourth-grade level (Allen, 1986; Traxler, 2000; Furth, 1966; Trybus & Karchmer, 1972). How to cite this paper: Musyoka, M. (2018). Play and Preschool Children Who Are Deaf: A Review of the Literature. Crea- tive Education, 9, 1794-1807. https://doi.org/10.4236/ce.2018.912130 Received: June 13, 2018 Accepted: September 7, 2018 Published: September 10, 2018 Copyright © 2018 by author and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Open Access