This paper reports on an analysis of teachers' talk of play-based learning and intentional teaching of mathematics. The participants in the study were two early childhood teachers in a pre-Prep program (the year before school). Teachers' talk of how they engaged in the interplay between children's play and the use of intentional teaching practices to introduce mathematics concepts formed the data set to be analysed. Conversational interviews and stimulated recall were used to gather data. A poststructural analysis of the teachers' talk suggests that socially and culturally constructed ways of being an early childhood teacher are both enabled and constrained by discourses of play and intentional teaching.