Level 2 is itself concrete practical activity at the same time as it has the content listed in the

description.

This approach to culture will be incorporated in the analysis of children’s life in day care.

The so-called level 2 will be of particular relevance when looking at children’s play.

 

 

CULTURE AS A  PSYCHOLOGICAL  PERSPECTIVE

 

Understanding children in their psychological development necessitates not only knowledge

of their thinking, feelings, motives, and so on, but also of how they contribute to the common

life (i.e., knowledge of the children as active humans) and, furthermore, knowledge of what

they produce/reproduce (things, ideas as well as social life), in short, how they participate in

and contribute to culture.

We may use the graphic model in Figure 1 to approach the psychological content inherent

in the concept of culture. The model presents the basic relations of the child in its life world

(Thyssen, 2000).

The person is related to other human beings and to objects. The relation to another human

being may be direct or it may be related to an object orientation. When we look at the

relations of the child, the principal persons in its early life are the mother and the father.

These persons are also central in the child’s early contact with and beginning explorations of

the world of things.

In its development, the child is drawn into a broader social context. It meets other adults

and it meets other children. These new relations call for the elaboration of the model shown

in Figure 2.

The basic model and its elaboration have functioned as a tool of analysis in the

observations of the children as well as in the actual analysis of the collected data. It has made

it possible to gain an understanding of the child in its social world – as participator and as

active producer/reproducer of things and ideas and of social life. The basic relations as

presented in the graphical models appear to be a key to a more general understanding of the


 

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 FIGURE 2. Child in a broader social context.

 

 

child in its life. They appear in the common life of the child as it develops within the care

of the adults, and they appear in the structure of the child’s play.

 

 

SMALL CHILDREN’S COMMON ACTIVITIES

 

Small children observe each other from an early age (Thyssen, 2000), and now and then they

may carry out simple acts together. The earliest real common and recurrent activity

undertaken by children in the cr` eche is the so-called emotional, dramatic activity (Thyssen,

1994). It may take place as in the following episode:

 

Mia (18 months) follows Victor into a room where you may tumble in mattresses and pillows. They crawl

around in Duplo bricks and then let themselves fall down into a beanbag chair. Victor then sits down in the

chair. Mia lies down on her stomach. A game begins. Victor touches Mia carefully on her back. She raises her

head, looks at him, and then turns her head away again. Victor laughs delightedly. They repeat the sequence

in a quickly rising tempo, Victor laughing more and more. Finally, Mia tumbles down from the chair. She

climbs up onto the chair again. They sit side by side. Then Victor takes hold of Mia and they tumble into each

other, laughing.

In slightly older children, this activity may consist in running noisily around as is the case

here:

 

Rasmus (23 months) goes to the indoor slide where Line (221/2 months) and Kaspar (331/

2) are. They call out

塗i, though without addressing anybody in particular. They say 澱oo, go behind the slide and look out from

there to some of the children. Then they run around a little in the hall. Line runs to the rocking horse and

climbs onto it. A child-care worker helps Rasmus climb onto it, and then they rock delightedly, laughing and

screeching to each other.

 

Mikkel (22 months) arrives. An adult helps him climb onto the rocking horse. He sits in the middle between

the two others and the rocking continues. Line and Rasmus climb down. Then Kaspar comes running from the

main room out into the hall, screeching like Line and Rasmus did shortly before. Rasmus runs after him,

screeching in the same way. They run, Kaspar in front, to the slide and crawl beneath it. Line and Stina (19

months) join them, screeching in the same way. Mikkel is still sitting on the rocking horse, and he screeches

in the same way.