Few areas of development are as important to early intervention as play. (Casby 2003). As pediatric speech-language pathologists we must understand the sequence of how play skills evolve during infancy and throughout the early preschool period so that we can accurately determine a child's current level of functioning during assessment. Even more importantly we need to know how we can use these stages of play during intervention to facilitate progress in a young child's speech-language skills. Learning how to meet a child at his developmental level will ensure early success in therapy as well as jumpstart a child when progress seems to plateau. This critical information can be applied across settings to design clinical and preschool-based treatment plans as well as family-centered strategies for very young children between the developmental ages of birth to four.