Representações infantis sobre o ritual da alimentação a partir da brincadeira simbólica “Comidinha”

Abstract

The present study is the result of inquiries and reflections about the meanings that children produce about food, woven during the internship in Early Childhood Education. We defined the following research question for our study: What are the narratives of teachers and undergraduate students about the eating ritual in the context of daycare centers and preschools, based on the symbolic game “food”? We aimed to understand children's representations of the ritual of eating in the context of daycare centers and preschools, in the symbolic game “comidinha”, based on the narratives of teachers and undergraduates. The investigation is based on a qualitative approach, being conducted by a methodological procedure called State of the Art, which is a type of bibliographical research, and by the application of a semi-structured questionnaire to a group of Early Childhood Education teachers and Pedagogy students who attended the curricular internship at this stage of Basic Education. Data analyzes followed basic premises of thematic analysis (BARDIN, 2016), revealing that children give new meaning to their eating routines through the game of making “food” and that this favors the production of children's cultures. It also became evident, with the completion of the State of the Art, the low production of research on the subject, in the databases we investigated. Furthermore, through the questionnaire, it was possible to understand that symbolic games, as part of children's cultures, are important tools for children's development, as well as for their interaction with their peers and adults. We suggest further investigations into the child's creative activity when playing with making food.