The study explores children’s emerging understanding of an important science concept in chemistry. Play-based learning activities were designed for children to experience and imagine the concept of ‘small’ as used in chemistry, moving from the visually experienced level of ‘small’ towards more imaginative understandings. Data were collected through visual ethnography. Analyses of six vignettes of conversations between children and the teacher illustrate development of children’s understanding of the focus concept. Deconstruction of everyday items familiar to the children and visual computer animations provided experiences that enabled children to transition from a macro-level of understanding to visualise the molecular/atomic level to differentiate between macro- and micro-understandings of ‘small’. A process of ‘sustained shared thinking’ could describe the teaching/learning processes evident in the children’s and teacher’s conversations. The analyses suggest that sustained and shared conversations between children and teachers should stem from children’s everyday experiences.

This study focuses on the development of executive functions in preschool children during a series of science activities. A longitudinal play-based learning intervention was designed and implemented following the design of an educational experiment. Data were collected through visual ethnography in hot situations with adult supervision. Results show how entwined the concepts of inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility are within young children’s development. The development of cognitive flexibility or attention shifting readily occurred when there were fictive characters (such as the king and his royal family), but changing perspective toward a nonfictive environment (i.e., taking other children’s perspectives) was a more difficult and time-consuming process. This process began in an individual perspective and expanded to acknowledging others’ perspectives, then moved toward creating common perspectives or alternative narratives. Results show that science activities can be a bridge for preschool children to transfer their use of executive functions, from fairytales and games toward everyday tasks.

This study focuses on the design of play-based learning activities for chemistry in preschool. Viewing chemistry as a part of our past and present culture instead of as a subject, provides the backdrop for a more holistic approach to chemistry within this specific environment. A cultural-historical perspective, together with scaffolding, emergent science skills and sustained shared thinking, made up the framework for the design of the learning activities. Results show that when scaffolding and emergent science skills are used within the design, they provide good support for both the content and the teacher in the actual learning situation. Working with scaffolding was also beneficial for professional development. However, for a progressive and inclusive activity design, it is essential to take into account aspects of the immediate environment and methods for direct evaluation.

Perezhivanie is a concept that was originally defined by Vygotsky, but it did not become a part of educational theory until recently. Today the concept has been revived, and it is now used as a way to include emotional aspects into education and educational research. The concept also provides a rationale for describing and forming personalised learning. The present study provides a literature review with the aim of covering the variety in definitions of the concept, as well as the different perspectives that the concept lends to research in general, and to research with focus on early years education in particular. Results show that the concept has been applied within the most common theoretical perspectives in use today (such as social, cultural and subjective perspectives) with an interesting array of outcomes, such as design of educational methods, analysis of different modes of experiencing and development of self-awareness. The use of this concept becomes a shift toward more emotional perspectives of learning and development that may not be altogether positive, as perezhivanie holds the risk of blurring the border between psychotherapy and education, which is something that would provide new challenges for education in general and especially for teacher education.

This study focuses on preschool class children and grade one pupils’ questions about the natural sciences. The article presents the questions that preschool class children and grade one pupils asked via a chat function in connection with a digital interactive lesson about molecules arranged by a culture center in Sweden. The results of the thematic analysis are discussed in relation to their didactic implications for natural science teaching with young learners. The most relevant conclusions are that children drew from their own experiences when approaching molecules, they could generalize their experiences and apply them to other contexts, and they needed time to process the content and then ask questions. Therefore, the authors suggest the use of children’s questions as a useful pedagogical tool for helping young children understand abstract concepts such as molecules. Furthermore, follow-up interviews with children are suggested as a means of mapping the origin of such questions.