There are various types and forms of play. A child's play begins around 3 months and starts with exploratory play in all its forms. First and foremost, the child is discovering their environment on every level1: visual, auditory and tactile. There are several types of exploration in babies: we speak of bodily exploration, object exploration and vocal exploration.

The limits of the movements available to a young child and their lack of coordination mean that they are above all discovering their senses. Indeed, a 2-3 month old baby is seeking sensory input; they stimulate their perceptual system by generating noises or sensations. For example, a baby lying on their tummy scratching a surface by alternately opening and closing their hands generates, through their motor movements, sensory input (noise and tactile feedback) that their brain will process, that is to say analyse and interpret. With several repetitions on various surfaces, the baby explores their environment and builds up a catalogue of stimuli relating to their environment and to the object.

Object exploration appears with the arrival of hand-eye coordination; around 3-4 months, the baby begins to grasp light objects (such as a rattle) and tries to handle them. At first, the child's movements lack stability and so the baby may accidentally hit themselves with the rattle. As their coordination improves, they manage to grasp an object in one hand, shake it, bring it to their mouth (around 5/6 months), bang it, and pass it from one hand to the other (around 7 months). This discovery of their environment happens through repetition. Babies love to perform an action and repeat it several times with the same object or with other objects2. This allows the child: To learn cause and effect, that is to say that a specific action will produce a specific result, for example: "I wave my arm, the rattle moves and makes a noise" or "I press a button and there is a sound".

To acquire knowledge relating to the object: babies love to put objects in their mouth; it should be noted that the mouth is an area in the child that is full of highly developed sensory receptors. Children use this sensory input to discover the properties of the object in question: its texture, its shape, its hardness, its malleability, its taste as well as its weight.

Bodily exploration, that is to say the discovery of one's own body, also begins around 2-3 months3. At first, the child discovers their hands by moving their fingers in front of them (3 months), then their face (4 months) by bringing their hands to their face, then their feet and knees (5-6 months), trying to grab them; then comes the discovery of the hair and thighs by grabbing them (9 months); between 10-12 months the child has better motor skills and discovers their whole body as well as their genitals.

Vocal exploration is the act of playing with one's voice; it is a prerequisite for language acquisition. The newborn only vocalises through vegetative sounds (crying, screaming, gurgling). These sounds express the infant's physiological needs through changes in pressure in the oral and pharyngeal cavities. Between 2 and 6 months, the child begins to engage in vocal play, where they explore and discover their voice. The child will play with their voice, changing the intensity (volume), increasing the duration and changing the pitch (higher or lower). At first these are "arrheu" and "agueu" sounds that will gradually diversify with the arrival of consonants. At that point, we no longer speak of play, but of language and communication.