ABSTRACT
The 4-year-old who said ‘My Gawd, I made it like Australia’ was clear about her agency in her production of meaning; another 4year-old was equally clear about her father’s deliberate intent in shaping a crocodile in taking bites from his delicately held toast when she said ‘You made it like a crocodile.’ Whether in describing and commenting on their own making, or their reading of the making by others, meaning is at the forefront of both of their concerns. It seems a reasonable, and I would say essential task to develop for ourselves a theory, a working account, of how children make meaning. Of course children tend not to engage in extended theory-making, though frequently they make comments which are so incisive that we can only wonder at the precision of their insights.
