I förskolans utemiljö är det vanligt att det finns en sandlåda på gården. Den är centralt placerad och barnen är där och leker. Enligt den nya Skollagen och förskolans reviderade läroplan ska verksamhetens innehåll vila på vetenskaplig grund och beprövad erfarenhet. Detta gäller även den verksamhet som pågår i sandlådan. Men vad är det som sker när sanden, barnen och lekredskapen möts i sandlådan? Detta är en kvalitativ studie som utifrån ett intra-aktivt perspektiv syftar till att synliggöra hur sanden i sandlådan, lekredskap och de yngsta barnen (1-3 år) skapar möjligheter och villkor för lek och meningsskapande. Utifrån fotografier, anteckningar och videofilm har nya begrepp skapats för att kunna beskriva och förklara det som sker i sandlådan. Resultaten visar på en ständig rörelse där sand, barn och lekredskap förflyttas, förändras och förvandlas. Barn, sand och lekredskap leker tillsammans i ömsesidiga och sammanvävda intra-aktioner. Studiens resultat bidrar till att visa på dessa komplexa processer och hur små barn, med hela sin kropp och alla sinnen, medvetet tillsammans med sanden och lekredskapen skapar ny mening och nya möjligheter. / In the preschool outdoor environment, it is common that there is a sandbox. It is centrally located and the children are there and play. According to the new Education act and Curriculum for the Preschool Lpfö 98 (Revised 2010) the content should be based on scientific evidence and proven experience. This also applies to the activities being performed in the sandbox. But what is happening in the sand, when the children and play equipment come together in the sandbox? This is a qualitative study based on an intra-active perspective, whose purpose is to visualize how the sand in the sandbox, the playground equipment and the youngest children (1-3 years) create opportunities and conditions for play and meaning. Based on photographs, notes and video, new concepts are created to describe and explain what happens in the sandbox. The results show a continuous movement in which sand, children, and playground equipment is moved, changed and transformed. Children, sand and playground equipment play together in mutual and intertwined intra-actions. The findings in the study help to demonstrate how these complex processes and young children, with the whole body and the senses, consciously together with the sand and play equipment create new meaning and new possibilities.

The study shows how to create a deeper understanding of the educational practice by using intra-active theory and analysis. We have let the five-year-olds at two preschools mark places on the premises which they perceive as rowdy/conflicted. These sites have since been observed and analysed with a focus on how environmental factors make up the situation and the thoughts that are possible to think there. The study has shown that the intra-active analysis method is an effective tool to make visible how educators, children and material combine to create environments with different charge. We have also been able to show how intra-active analysis gives a value to unregulated environments of preschool; how the theory offers an argument for disorder many times can be a prerequisite for children themselves to get space to define what creation can be.

The purpose of this study is to examine children's intra-active relations with sounds in an explorative work at a preschool (1-to 2-year old children) analyzed through the lens of agential realism (Barad 2007, 2008), and to examine its didactical effects. This study has a transdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary design based on preschool didactics and the natural sciences, mainly physics andbiology. Research data consist of pedagogical documen-tation in the form of a short video sequence generated in a preschool sound project. An agential realistic approach in this study means an analysis of how sound is produced intra-actively in children's play and exploration in a pre-school. Barad’s agential realism also defines specific ethical stances for both the researcher’s involvement in the production of knowledge and the ethical implications of what that new knowledge and reality reveals(Barad 2007, 2008). The results of this study demonstrate the possibility to work with young preschool children around sound and how sound can be understood as a significant partner in children's play and exploration. This work ́s transdis-ciplinary goal, which is to work across the boundaries of preschool practice and scientific theory, contributes new knowledge about how sound vibration, frequency, loudness, hearingand acoustics intra-acts with children ́sbodies, feelings and thoughtsand the educational environmentsand discourses that children face in preschool. This study's specific impact on practice is that preschool staff can gain a greater understanding on the significance and im-pact of furnishings, architecture and organization according to time and place on how children express themselves and explore sound as a material-discursive phenomenon.

Denna studie utgår från barns möten i förskolan och undersöker ålder som ett görande. Studiens data utgör 18 timmars videoobservationer på en förskoleavdelning i en större svensk stad där sexton barn deltar från åldrarna ett till sex år. Studien utgår från en posthumanistisk grundsyn genom agentisk realism (se Barad, 2007 och Lenz Taguchi, 2012) och tematisk analysmetod har tillämpats i analysdelen (se Braun & Clarke, 2006). Studiens resultat visar att barn, språk, diskurser, material och miljö intra-aktivt samhandlar och performativt producerar ålder som fenomen i förskolan. Studiens bidrag är att med stöd i agentisk realism introducera sätt att förstå ålder som ett socialt och materiellt fenomen. Detta skapar en förskjutning från barnet som ensam aktör i förklarandet av normerande ålderspraktiker i förskolan för att mer tillgängligt möjliggöra ett förklarande av aktörskap inom sociala och materiella praktiker och hur dessa samkonstituerar ålder som fenomen i förskolan. / This agential realist study aims to explore age as a social and material doing in children’s meetings in preschool. The data consists of eighteen hours of video observations in a preschool located in a larger city in Sweden. The study works theoretically with agential realism (see Barad, 2003, 2007 and Lenz Taguchi, 2012) and the analysis was conducted thematically (see Braun & Clarke, 2006). The study shows that children, language, discourses, materiality and the surrounding environment intra-actively co-operates and performatively produces age as a phenomenom in preschool. The study contributes with support in agential realism to introduce a way to understand age as a socially and materially constructed phenomena. This produces a consequential shift from the child as the only responsible actor in the explanations of childrens normative age practices in the preschool and enables a possible explanation of agency within the social and material practices where these collaboratively produces age as a phenomena in preschool.