In order to better determine the intuitions that the primary 4 grade students have about the concept "play", this investigation used play metaphors for analyzing the responses of a study carried out during the 1st term of the 2012-2013 academic year in 8 primary schools within the province of Sakarya (Turkey). The study included 645 4th grade primary school students from which only the responses of 378 of the informants were taken into account (204 girls and 174 boys) due to the impossibility of reading some of their answers among other reasons. The study resulted in the creation of 10 conceptual categories from 85 metaphors that were developed by students for the concept play. Later, the metaphors in each conceptual category were classified by taking their basic features into account: play as pleasure (208), play as activity (40), play as instructive (31), play as must-have (30), play as person (21), play as the object (18), play as location (13), play as food (8), play as technology (7) and play as an institution (2). The ultimate purpose of this research is for teachers to be able to use this information when selecting games for the students during training phase.