It was suggested that it was the first in a projected series of paintings representing the Ages of Man, in which Children's Games would have stood for Youth.

[3] The children, who range in age from toddlers to adolescents, roll hoops, walk on stilts, spin hoops, ride hobby-horses, stage mock tournaments, play leap-frog and blind man's bluff, perform handstands, inflate pigs' bladders and play with dolls and other toys.

[citation needed] This crowded scene is to some extent relieved by the landscape in the top left-hand corner; but even here children are bathing in the river and playing on its banks.

Bruegel shows the children absorbed in their games with the seriousness displayed by adults in their apparently more important pursuits.

This idea was a familiar one in contemporary literature: in an anonymous Flemish poem published in Antwerp in 1530 by Jan van Doesborch, mankind is compared to children who are entirely absorbed in their foolish games and concerns.