Seeing & Believing vs Action & Meaning

During the reading of play in mental development of Children, I've been kept thinking the changing relationship happened between Object/Meaning and Action/Meaning during play as well as what would happen during adults' more serious work.

In play a child deals with things as having meaning. Word meanings replace objects, and thus an emancipation of word from object occurs. Separating words from things requires a pivot in the form of other things. But the moment the stick – i.e., the thing – becomes the pivot for severing the meaning of “horse” from a real horse, the child makes one thing influence another in the semantic sphere. 

The meaning of action is basic, but even by itself action is not neutral. At an earlier age the position was the reverse: action was the structural determinant, and meaning was a secondary, collateral, subordinated feature. What we said about severing meaning from object applies equally well to the child’s own actions. A child who stamps on the ground and imagines himself riding a horse has thus accomplished the inversion of the fraction action/meaning to meaning/action. -----Vygotsky.

I feel like during play, children basically could giving various meanings to different objects based on their own needs rather than the physical properties. It is the same with dealing with action. This unique psychological function enables children to develop their psychological topology which help them liberate from the field of vision. Further, they could adjust their affection based on the changing perception. To this extent, I don't think the creative work from adults would be so different from children's play. Since both of them need imagination and that psychological topology to transfer abstract ideas between different objects. For example, to design planes, designers need to transfer their thinking from birds to other objects. It also requires them to place meanings on very different objects. For the main difference between work and play, I would say that for children, they tend to have more actions during play. While for adults, they could sit still and think a lot. But for children, it seems that it is quite hard for them to think deeply without action. By acting upon the world, children seem to change the reality more flexibly even though it is not real for adults. But for adults, if they always believe what they see directly in the world, then how could they make real changes on it?Thus, I'm thinking about how perception is shaped for children and adults in different ways. How different kinds of action could shape their views on reality and imagination?