ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to extend the cultural-historical theory of L. S. Vygotsky and A. N. Leontiev's theories of children's learning and development so that the complexity of children's activities in different practices can be conceptualized. It presents case analyses of tensions between motives and demands that become visible during children's daily transitions between home and school. The chapter explains the reconstruction of learning and development present in the dynamic of demand and motives, pointing to how it appears on several levels, a societal, a practice and an activity level. To describe and understand the conditions for children's life in modern society one has to identify the institutional practices in which they participate, and the activities that dominate within the institutional practices, what demands the practices put on children, and what possibilities they give for activities and how children act in these activities.
