Abstract: Playfulness refers to man’s ability to absorb personal, social and cultural knowledge of learning through games, toys and fun in an instructive way. In this way, the playful instruments contemplate the child’s psychomotor development. Thus, the general objective of the work is to demonstrate the importance of recreational activities for the psychomotor expansion of children in the early years, in the city of Santa Cruz do Capibaribe – PE. The study was founded through publications that discuss the different ways that playfulness, as an auxiliary instrument, subsidizes the acquisition of knowledge within the teaching/learning process. Regarding the methodology, it is a research with bibliographic, documental and field procedures, of the exploratory type and with a qualitative approach, seeking to demonstrate the results of the practice of playful activities carried out in a municipal school in Santa Cruz do Capibaribe-PE, in the 2nd year class of the Early Years of Elementary School. Data analysis was carried out through three intervention phases (observation, participation and conducting) that outlined a way in which the practices involved were applied, in addition to the application of a questionnaire with teachers and students. Thus, the results showed that the children were quite receptive to the activities performed, sharing a set of situations that always involved playfulness, such as storytelling, a game, music, dance, among other activities, involving structuring practices for the children’s contentment and for the construction of their psychomotricity through reasoning as well as movement, essential elements for their psychomotor development.

Keywords: Playfulness. Elementary Education. Psychomotricity.