This paper discusses the role of playing in the curriculum of early education. Following the new LDB (national orientations for Education), we have the task of constructing or reconstructing, in some cases, proposals for early childhood care that meet the developing child’s needs. The change is difficult due to the trend of applying, through analogy, a school model to early childhood education. This trend is evident in the environment organization and in the activities proposed to children. We argue against looking at playing as a vehicle through which the child will achieve schooling goals, representing a vision of childhood only as a promise for the future, disregarding the present. We propose instead an early education that privileges a concept of development as present adaptation.
Early education; Play; Development; Curriculum