Not a box: It’s a bathtub!

Larissa and Simone took the box to a corner of the room. Simone was inside the box and Larissa came in saying: “It’s my bathtub”. Simone got out of the bath and said: “I’m going to wash your head”. Actions and gestures to wash her classmate’s hair began. An imaginary shower was opened with a twist of Simone’s hand on the door of the room and a ball of paper turned into shampoo when Larissa said “get here, get it for us!” and handed the ball to Simone. After 56 seconds, Larissa said “mom”, introducing the theme of the narrative that would run throughout the event. At the same time, Simone and Larissa watched Rita, their teacher, help Lúcia and Ivan share a box. Ivan tried to sit on the box where Lúcia was hiding. The teacher said: “Watch out/be careful/not to get hurt”.

The bath continued and, after wiping Larissa down with an imaginary towel, it was Simone’s turn to get into the tub and have her hair washed by her friend. After 30 seconds, Laís approached and looked at the two girls. The bath continued and Simone said “mom/towel/towel”. In this first moment, the actions, facial expressions, and speech of the two girls demonstrated that the box had become a bathtub. Moreover, it was a bathtub that supported a mother washing her daughter’s hair.

Then, the two girls smiled, put their flip-flop sandals into the box and shook it. The gesture of shaking to move something inside the box was reminiscent of the meanings of the toy baskets in the classrooms over those three years (Figure 2). It can be seen that the languages that are created and used have the ability to convey different meanings for the social actions that ensured the involvement of the two girls in the activity of playing.

Larissa’s mother explained, in an interview, that she is a hairdresser and works in a beauty salon. In 2017 and 2018, we identified that hair care, as a cultural content in Larissa’s family life, affected and drove many interactions with other children and cultural artifacts at EMEI Tupi, as well as being a content she inserted into imaginary situations. Constructing the meanings of comb, brush, shampoo and hairdryer with building blocks and empty bottles, as well as pretending to brush, wash and dry the hair of dolls, children and teachers, were some of the situations Larissa constructed through [action/imagination]. Several times, in 2018, Simone was her partner in these situations.

Over the course of those three years, it was also noticeable that Simone’s mother used various accessories in her hair, such as laces, turbans, bows and various clips. These ornaments highlighted Simone’s racial and cultural belonging in relation to the class, instigating the other children’s interests in such artifacts. In addition, we were informed that, in her family context, Simone’s older sister (aged 15) used to spend a lot of time doing her own hair.

In the institutional context, the social practices of grooming have been part of the group’s imagination since 2017, as a collective routine. In that year, there was a clothesline on the wall to store hair accessories and we video recorded moments of combing and pinning up the girls’ hair, especially in the classroom itself. In 2018, there were empty shampoo bottles in the toy baskets as well as a pink bathtub which, at various events, made up imaginary plots about bathing dolls and hygiene and beauty care in the classroom or in the solarium. There were events in which the teachers named the action of the children inside the boxes as a bathtub.

Therefore, throughout three years, there was a materiality present that supported experiences with cultural content associated with this practice. In this way, the collective imagination supports the children’s imaginary activity (^{Fleer & Peers, 2012}), in line with the cultural experiences of the two girls’ families. There is a process of sharing social practices, such as care, cultural routines, artefacts, and relationships with adults and between the children themselves that bring out cultural contents that are perceived, experienced, and recreated in play. On the other hand, children’s experiences in other social contexts diversify and broaden the content of their play in a new collective context. In the children’s relationship with the box, for example, one may understand how the social roles of mother and daughter, the collective care routines, and the material and symbolic sources present in the room (i.e. stories with the wolf as a character) are recombined by the children’s [action/imagination]. It is this unity that creates a set of symbols for actions, a shared language, the need to communicate intentions, and a singular narrative that sustains relationships in the play activity.

Not a box, look at the wolf!

Larissa and Simone continued playing with the cardboard box. After a bath in the tub, Larissa helped Simone out of the box. Simone said “wolf/the wolf” to Larissa, looking at the glass door. Larissa and Simone carried the box across the room and returned to the same spot where they were before, next to the glass door. Simone looked out of the room again and repeated: “Look at the wolf!”, to which Larissa replied: “Let’s go/kill him/then?”. She bent down, picked up the pink flip-flop sandal from the box, and slammed it against the glass door. Simone moved away from the door, with expressions of fear of the wolf, Larissa threw the pink flip-flop sandal into the box, looked at Simone and they both smiled.

The fear of the wolf emerged in Larissa and Simone’s play, as well as the protection of the mother/Larissa in relation to her daughter/Simone, giving visibility to the affects that underpinned the whole imagination. In this sense, ^{Vigotski (2003}, p. 155, own translation) argues that “in play, in lies or in stories, the child finds an inexhaustible source of experiences and, in this way, fantasy opens new doors for our needs and aspirations to come to life”.

Sharing symbolic sources through literature is something that deserves to be highlighted here, as it represents a narrative way of organizing social experiences in which there is a plot, the agents of the action, the actions, and their outcomes. Other scholars have analyzed the relationship between narrative thinking and play (^{Bruner, 1990}; ^{Kishimoto, 2007}), as well as between the literary plot and the origin and transformation of children’s imagination in play (^{Fleer, 2017}). In the play with the box, we saw that the insertion of a character, the wolf, present in the stories told by the teachers in 2017 and 2018, in the materiality of the literature books and singing games (such as the singing game “let’s go for a walk in the woods, while the big bad wolf doesn’t come”) creates a symbolic field of defense and persecution of the wolf already present in the collective imagination of the group. Therefore, play is not about the perception of isolated characteristics, but a way of generalizing the meaning of the actions that produce meaning to the artifact (Vigotski, 1933/²⁰⁰⁹).

At this point, the box was used as a basket to store the “kill the wolf” tool, which changed the girls’ perception, leading them to shake the box, and transforming the meaning of the bathtub-box into a basket-box. Thus, the [action/imagination] creates a form of relationship with the box formed by its meaning and characteristics. The [action/imagination] is supported both by the meanings attributed and by the materiality of the artifact itself: it wouldn’t be possible to keep the flip-flop sandal and the balls if they were playing with something else, i.e., a building block. The concreteness of the artifact being played with is also important, as is the social significance of the box as a storage medium. The children’s [action/imagination] brings about drama between the perceived material properties of the box, the social meanings and the shared narratives, establishing a dramatic act of meaning-making. It is this action in the symbolic field that makes it possible to create a narrative of the mother caring for her daughter (the mother who bathes her, washes her hair, and protects her from the wolf) that reconfigures the girls’ relationships with the artifact itself as a symbol in a cultural group, with the context of the play and with the people present.

Not a box, it’s a basket!

As they shook the box containing the paper balls and flip-flop sandals, Simone and Larissa made a similar movement as if they were shaking the baskets of toys that were present in the classroom throughout 2017 and 2018. The look on the two children’s faces as they rocked the basket together shows their enthusiasm for the movement and the sound the objects made when they were moved around in the box. The movement is also reminiscent of the experiences with the nursery teachers who, throughout 2017, placed the children in these baskets and swung them around.

In the classroom, in 2018, there were four green baskets with toys that were placed on the wall and which, after being emptied daily, the children used as trolleys. By acting with the box as if it were a basket for storing things, moving it around the room, and swinging it from side to side, the two girls broadened the meaning of the artifact itself, creating other forms of relationship with this artifact and with the social context at that moment. Box and basket have close social meanings (storing things) and, with the action of swinging, imagination and memory recreated events in which children entered the basket and were swung by the teachers.

Vigotski (1933/²⁰⁰⁹) considered creation, through the activity of playing, as one of the forms of transition from perceptual thinking to ideational thinking, that is, a form of thinking through the ideas and constructed meanings about objects, which, in this case, is possible through [action/imagination]. Such an assumption might lead us to note that creative activity, in other words, imagination, constitutes children’s cultural development in play by enabling them to master their actions and intentions. In this case, it’s not just perception, but [action/imagination] that guides the activity of producing meaning, mental images, and social symbols that represent objects.

Not a box: Look at the wolf, Mom!

After the play, Simone pointed at the glass door again, telling Larissa that the wolf was still outside. Larissa picked up the pink flip-flop sandal and repeated the action of knocking on the glass door in order to scare the wolf away, asking “what’s/up/darling?”, and dragging the box towards Simone. Simone called out to Larissa (“mom/mom”) and walked to the other side of the room, taking a seat under a shelf. Larissa walked towards her and also sat down under the shelf.

At this point, Larissa and Simone took up again the “mother and daughter” narrative, intertwining it with the fear of the wolf outside the room. Through the [action/imagination] that there is a wolf present in the imagined narrative, the children established a field of protective meanings through the box under the shelf. The location of the box in front of the body leads to an association with the meaning of protection and also an approach and avoidance cultural routine (^{Corsaro, 2009}) that we have seen established at other events throughout 2018. Through the use of a little house, a room in the cupboard, baskets, mats, and the table in the classroom, or even by moving their bodies away in catch-up play routines (^{Silva, 2021}), the children shared various routines, with the teachers and among themselves, to escape from the wolf, played by other children.

We argue that, through [action/imagination], children recover experiences and re-elaborate them in other contexts and with other artefacts, in a process of recombination and new acts of signification. Therefore, the activity of playing integrates other cultural functions such as memory, thought, perception, speech, and imagination into a functional system. The activity of playing guides the process of signification and symbolic production and, therefore, the development of human consciousness and subjectivity.

Not a box, it’s a drum!

Larissa and Simone turned the box upside down, causing the flip-flop sandals and paper balls to fall out. The two girls hit the bottom of the box, turning it into a drum. At this point in the event, the gesture of beating the drum with one’s hands and producing sounds is representative of the meanings of the drum built up in collective practices over time. Since 2017, the teachers have used different media to produce sounds and accompany songs and other cultural routines, including the toy drum itself (Figure 2). In the event, there was an appropriation of the meaning of hitting a surface with both palms as the production of sound and music in the group and, at the same time, meanings for each other’s actions with that artifact. The turning of the box and the gesture of tapping on its bottom made it possible to continue the imaginary situation in other semantic fields - like the drum that produces sound.

The two girls’ gestures and mimetic expressions are symbolic actions that represent and explain something to someone, specific to humans (^{Vigotski, 2021}). Gesture, as a semiotic medium, is the foundation of our human capacity to share intentions, address each other as interaction partners, and build intersubjectivities (^{Fichtner, 2010}). In the “Não é uma caixa!” event, it becomes apparent that the girls’ mimetic expressions were constructed by a concrete situation and were also interpreted by them in order to be incorporated, through imitation, into the situation that is being transformed by the acts of produce meaning that made common action possible. In other words, when playing with a cultural artifact (the box), the children’s gestures and expressions have sign structures, since they have the box as a symbolic referent, but integrate each other’s actions in an act of collaboration and reciprocity.

Children’s [actions/imagination] make it possible to create meaning and dialogic interactive fields (^{Rossetti-Ferreira et al. 2004}), in which Larissa and Simone’s actions were shared and interdependent. In other words, meanings are renegotiated and redefined dialogically, for example, when one begins to hit the box with her hands after the other. The dialogical interactive field thus reorganizes each other’s actions and the entire system of psychological functions, since the [action/imagination] opens up other possibilities for the box, now re-signified as a drum. At the same time, the game of producing drum sounds makes it possible to maintain and transform the group’s cultural routines, such as a musical band, which has brought about sound materiality since 2017 (Figure 2), demonstrating, through [action/imagination], a memory that is built over time.

Not a box, it’s a ball pit, it’s a bathtub! What about the wolf?

Continuing the play activity, Larissa said to Simone: “Look/at/the/pit/of/polka/dots/that/mommy/gave/you!”, to which Simone replied: “The/big/bad/wolf!”. Larissa pushed the box forward, throwing the objects out again. As soon as all the objects had fallen, Larissa asked Simone: “Pick them up/with me!”. Simone helped her pick up the objects and put them back into the box. Larissa dragged the box back under the shelf. Simone accompanied Larissa repeating “The/wolf/the/big/bad/wolf!”. Two other children, Maria (2y 10m) and Carlos (2y 8m), approached. Maria put two flip-flops inside the cardboard box and, together with Larissa, climbed into the box. Simone rubbed their heads. The three children grinned.

After getting out of the box, Larissa helped Simone into the bathtub, who said: “Now/I’m/going/to/take/a/bath”. Larissa took a small paper ball and tapped Simone on the head twice. Simone pointed across the room and said: “The/wolf!”. Maria continued to watch Larissa and Simone sitting under the shelf. Larissa said to Simone: “Let’s/get out/of/the/bathroom!”, to which Simone repeated: “The/wolf/mom!”. Larissa, Simone, and Maria carried the box, walked around the room, and returned to under the shelf. Maria picked up some paper balls from the floor and put them in the box.

At this point, Larissa introduced the meaning of the box as a ball pit, a gift from a mother to her daughter. After Maria’s action and speech, the girls took back the box as a bathtub, but also as protection from the wolf. It is noticeable that the “mother and daughter” narrative sustains the play activity of the two girls.

As the play continued, Larissa repeated: “Ball/pit!” Simone and Larissa went into the ball-pit box. Maria said “I/want/to/go/into/the/bathroom!”, but got no response from the other children. Larissa and Simone looked up and Larissa said “it’s raining!”, to which Simone echoed “it’s raining”. They put both hands on their heads, seeming to protect themselves from the rain.

The continuity of the event shows that Larissa and Simone’s actions of pushing the box, and knocking over the objects inside, as well as Maria’s action of putting paper balls inside the box, produced meanings of a ball pit. However, Maria didn’t seem to share the meaning of the ball pit and took up the semantic field related to the bathroom.

The ball pit, an artifact present in 2017, had a fundamental story in the constitution of experiences in the curriculum of this group (^{Cortezzi et al., 2020}). Thus, the memory of these experiences in the ball pit made it possible for Larissa and Simone to propose this play.

Not a box: The wolf is back!

At the end of the event, Larissa and Simone continued playing with the box. Larissa turned the box over again, letting all the objects fall to the floor. Henrique approached and then Larissa said: “It’s the wolf!”. Henrique continued to stare at her. Larissa carried the box to the other side of the room, sat down inside the box, and called out to Simone, who was dancing to the music put on by the teacher Rita. Simone returned to her colleague and, seeing Carlos, pointed at him saying “That’s the wolf!”. Carlos made movements with his hands, simulating grabbing Simone. The stereo played the Brazilian nursery rhyme “Carneirinho, carneirão” [Big, little sheep] and Simone started dancing again. Larissa got out of the box and, with Henrique (2y 10m) and Carlos, jumped in with Simone.

The [action/imagination], in this cultural routine established by Simone and Larissa in relation to Carlos and Henrique, to whom they assigned the role of the wolf, establishes the dialectic between child and environment, languages, and cultures. The cultural context of the classroom, with its corners, artifacts, sounds (doll, box, people, music), and the affects that amplify or reduce the capacity to act (Spinoza, 1677/²⁰¹⁷, p. 177) are imbricated in the actions and languages that make the cultural content of play visible. We consider the movements of coming together and moving away as a cultural routine, since being together collectively in a context of care and education made it possible to share symbolic sources (especially children’s songs and literature) about fear and danger that constituted the affects to act as if they were avoiding something.

The presence of wolf stories and popular folklore jokes involving the avoidance-approach routines of animals, such as the wolf, during the years 2017 and 2018, establishes the collective imagination that enabled the creation of imaginary situations materialized in actions such as approaching and moving away. Thus, one may note the dimension in this routine related to a process of building a common understanding of the gestures of moving away and moving closer, such as the body position that moves away and the gaze that summons, which act as semiotic mediators and support the actions of other children.

Therefore, cultural routines in a group that shares the collective context of care and education are re-signified in play in a process of permanence and appropriation. In our research with babies and children up to three years old, we observed that the structural dimensions, such as contextualization, embellishment, and the framing of material elements (^{Corsaro, 2011}), although relevant to maintaining the imaginary situation, do not by themselves sustain the dialogic interactive field. [Action/imagination] is the unit of analysis of cultural development in the group, since they create syntheses between social structures, cultures, languages that express meanings of distance and closeness, and artifacts that amplify other cultural contents of routines, social and family practices. In other words, play may reorganize the affects in the narrative. The feelings of fear and distance from the wolf, for example, are tensioned by the care and protection of the mother, the idea of going home, as well as the strategies of hitting the wolf with the gesture of using the flip-flop sandal forcefully on the surface.