In this study, the play preferences of 80 five-year-old children, 40 girls and 40 boys, from four schools in Turkey and the characteristics that shape their preferred plays were examined. The research was designed by descriptive method, which is one of the qualitative research patterns, and the data were collected using draw-and-tell technique. Crayons and drawing papers were distributed to the children participating in the study and they were asked to draw a play they wanted to play. During the drawing, the children were interviewed by asking questions. Thematic analysis method was used in the study; open coding was performed to group the drawings and interview records of the children under the themes and sub-themes. As a result of thematic analysis, five main themes were created regarding the plays preferred by children and how and where they prefer to play them. The results showed that all children preferred open-ended plays, they mostly prefer modern plays (50%) (type of play), playing with friends (44%) (social connection), dynamic plays (69%) (physical function), indoors plays (54%) (playground) and to use ready-made toys (42%) (toys used).