This paper provides a brief description of the Greek-Cypriot early childhood education system and focuses on the current education reform. We focus on one of the main changes of the reform, a new status for play within the daily educational programme. The goal of this paper is two-fold; first to portray play in the former and current proposed curricula though document analysis and second to provide examples of the current practices through non-participant observations and interviews with children, teachers and principals, concerning the role of play and describe how these have been traditionalised. Findings show the different perspectives on play and support the need for the reconceptualisation of play, since free activities are basically organised around structured and teacher-directed activities. The paper provides a stance on play which allows children to be social agents, supports socio-cultural processes of learning and encourages participation in meaningful play activities. (author abstract)