The international trend to increase the cognitive achievement of early childhood children has generated a need for better understanding how concept formation occurs within play-based programs. Yet the theories of play for supporting early childhood professionals were originally not conceptualized with this need in mind. In this article, concepts from cultural-historical theory are used to theorise how imagination and cognition can work together in play-based programs to support concept formation. This article theorises at a psychological level how both cognition and imagination work in unity and develop in complexity, with imagination acting as the bridge between play and learning. A dialectical view of imagination and cognition is foregrounded, and through this a new theory of play, named as conceptual play, is introduced. It is argued that conceptual play will help teachers to work more conceptually with children in their play-based programs.
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