ABSTRACT
In recent years clay has had two distinct functions among those concerned with very young children. For teachers of preschool groups it serves as a raw material out of which things may be made, an approach that is appropriate within an educational framework that emphasizes the imparting of skills, manual and verbal. For clinicians, it serves with apparent success as a projective tool, since it supplies a means of communicating inner difficulties for young children who cannot express themselves verbally. One of the objectives of the present chapter is to bring about a rapprochement between these two functions, since each of them can be of enormous benefit to the child in the nursery or kindergarten group.
