This paper addresses the incompletely resolved tension between play-based and direct teaching approaches to early years pedagogy and practitioners' resultant difficulties in understanding and delivering high-quality practice. Previously, we argued for the importance of infusing playfulness into all classroom interactions and activities in order to assist practitioners in forming a useful mental model of early years practice. Here, we extend the playful image to present a new, coherent framework for early years practice, based on three dimensions: the degree of playfulness in the activity taking place, the locus of control of the action during the activity and the nature of the learning taking place. We lay out the framework and describe its relation to free play as a prelude to discussing how it applies to classroom play and other types of early years classroom activity, illustrated by cameos. It is argued that the full range of each dimension should be well sampled through choosing a variety of activities and that such an approach will preserve high levels of child engagement. The framework provides a useful tool to prompt reflective practice and professional development.