Introduction: Childhood cancer is a complex disease that requirest prolonged treatment, hospital demands. Chemotherapy is the most used treatment of childhood cancer, although is has several side effects and requires hospitalization wich has an impact on the child's life. Playing is an inherent and essential activity in the child's life, regardless of age and clinical condition, and play is an important resource for the expression and elaboration of traumatic experiences. In this sense, the Dramatic Therapeutic Toy (DTT) is a resource that allows the understanding of the feelings and emotional reactions of the child, helping in the dramatization of the experiences with the diseases, invasive procedures and the hospitalization situation. Objective: To understand how the chemotherapy treatment repercussions in the play of pretends of children with cancer who undergo this procedure. Materials and Methods: It was performed an descriptive exploratory study as carried out using as methodology the methodology of multiple case studies with children from 4 to 12 years of age. Five children who underwent chemotherapy treatment in a university hospital in the interior of São Paulo, from april to september, 2016, participated in the study. The data collection resource was DTT, using conventional and symbolic general and symbolic toys. Conventional and symbolic imaginative materials related to hospitalization. The sessions were filmed and began with the following guiding question: "Let's play a child who had chemotherapy?" The videos were assisted by two independent evaluators aiming for greater trust in the transcription of the data. Results and discussion: From the descriptions of the units of meanings found in the behaviors and discourses, emerged by five thematic categories: exploration and choice of materials, presence of distractors, reaction to modeling, play pretend with domestic theme and play pretend with the topic related to hospitalization. In general, the children were clear about what they were going to play with, and the play on the topic related to hospitalization was present in all DTT sessions. All children played on the bed, however, it had some limitations such as venous access, device alarms, presence of health professionals in the bed, this did not prevent them from playing and getting involved. In general, the children observed modeling and engaged in play, without imitating what the evaluator was doing. Conclusion: Despite the limitations imposed by the context (playing on the bed, venous access, external noise) the children showed great commitment in the game. To play is still seen by many health care professionals as being of minor importance in the care of the child and therefore may be disrupted to warnings or clinical procedures that could await the end of the DTT session. The main choice on the part of the children was the play of pretends to the theme related to the hospitalization, which demonstrated great richness of detail and great knowledge on the part of the children on the clinical proce...