Play has a very important function in the development and education of a child. So much so that play is the basis of child's physical, cognitive, language, communication, emotional and social development, a part of real life and the most effective learning process for the child. Play is one of the basic foundations in an effective learning process for children with special needs as well as children with normal development. The first practitioners in special education are "special education teachers". Therefore, it is their duty to use play consciously in the development and education of special needs children. At this point, it is important to determine the perceptions of the special education teacher candidates regarding the concept of "play". The purpose of this study is to determine the perceptions of special education teacher candidates by using metaphors regarding the concept of “play” while revealing the reasons for choosing these metaphors. The participants are made up of 128 special education teacher candidates studying in Special Education Department at the Uludag University Education Faculty during the year 2017-2018. This study is structured as a qualitative descriptive research. The data was collected using a questionnaire made up of open-ended questions. The participants were asked to fill the blanks of such sentence as “Play is like/similar to.......because.......”. Qualitative procedures were utilized when analysing the data. By the end of the process various metaphors were determined. According to the results, 59 different metaphors under 9 categories were determined. When examining the metaphors that were obtained, we can see that the concept of “play” was revealed as being more than one and all different from one another, these metaphors were mainly used under the categories of “play as a method/tool for education (25,78%)” and play as a preparation to life/life itself (16,4%).”