By using the children's own thoughts and stories this theses aim to investigate and illustrate the phenomenon of rough and tumble play and its existence among five year olds in preschool.    

The formulations of the questions are:

• What do children consider as rough and tumble play? - and what characterise that?

• From without a perspective of rough and tumble play, which kinds of rough and tumble play do the children play in preschool? - and how do those characterise?

• What makes rough and tumble play possible and accepted for the children to play in preschool?

In this thesis I have investigated the questions above by interviewing 11 five years olds about how they consider rough and tumble play in preschool. From without Birgitta Knutsdotter Olofsson's and Torben Hangaard Rasmussen's view about play and rough and tumble play I created a perspective of rough and tumble play, which I used for analyzing the empirics. With rough and tumble play I mean games or plays that includes wrestling, hitting, kicking, pushing, chasing, running or/and the use of weapons against other human beings or other visualized beings or/and human beings.

The conclusions are that children has many different opinions of what rough and tumble play is. Depends on who you are asking you will get a different perspective. The conclusions also shows that rough and tumble play can exist, not just by its self, but also in interplay with other kinds of games and plays. The children are using different strategies to make the rough and tumble play fit the restrictions put on by the educators in the preschool.