This article is an embodied representation of how narrative illustrates Hannah Arendt's ideas of action, natality and plurality. It is, in essence, a story of a story that situates the actions of two young children as an instance where difference came together through the political and public act of drawing. Throughout the unfolding of the event, and in the subsequent retelling of that event, subjectivity came into presence, for both the children and myself. Our knowing was mediated by our immediate experience and understood only in the reflection of the experience. The encounter highlights how early childhood art practices can serve as an opening for contemplating a relational theory of learning. It further illustrates how narrative frameworks provide important opportunities to respond to difference through the reorganisation and reintegration of ideas generated in action.

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Children’s drawing is an important part of early childhood learning experiences. While young children seem to have little need for drawing instruction, classrooms where drawing features as a central component to curriculum provide material conditions that can sustain its practice. In this paper, I employ a new material heuristic to explore how drawing and the drawings children produce are implicated in the production of pedagogical matter. To do so, I invite readers to visit with a Reggio-inspired preschool classroom where, for the past 3 years, I have participated together with children and teachers in a research relationship focusing on young children’s learning and early childhood pedagogy.