This article examines what we can learn about kindergarten childhoods when using archived records about children’s free play with building blocks in the 1930s. Taking its starting point in previous research about how Froebelian building blocks have been part of kindergarten ideology and education, the article explores how visual and textual sources promote different versions of childhoods in and around a kindergarten institution. Moreover, the article argues for the importance of not only paying attention to children’s archived visual and verbal voices, but more noticeably, also to girls’ and boys’ non-verbal activities and engagement, i.e., non-verbal “voices”.

Focusing on newsreels, commissioned films and exhibitions this paper explores the image of ECEC in the visual cultures of the Swedish interwar period. It analyses archival evidence suggesting that visual culture content such as films, photographs, exhibitions and the press played an early and crucial role in communicating ideas and ideals about ECEC to the public. This is consistent with research in film and media history, which establishes that visual media played an important role in shaping the modern welfare society in the interwar period. The methodological framework is based on the idea that photographic images depict a physical reality while simultaneously being inherently constructed. As historical sources, photographic images contain information about the look of things at a particular point in time and visualise the image that the maker intended to present to the public/viewer. Using a visually interdisciplinary and source pluralist approach, this paper analyses the representation of ECEC in visual culture and aims to provide insights beyond analyses of texts produced by the preschool profession or policy. It also explores and discusses the image of ECEC that was presented and promoted to the public during a period in Sweden when several ECEC institutions for children aged 0 to 7 coexisted, namely the kindergarten (Swedish: barnträdgård), the nursery school (Swedish: daghem/lekstuga/barnstuga)and  the crèche (Swedish: barnkrubba), but in reality very few children and families used these institutions.

Research topic/aim How did preschool go from being exclusive for a select group of children in the early 1900s to being a regular part of every family's daily life? The proposed study starts from the hypothesis that media, through its visual content, has been crucial in promoting and disseminating concepts and ideals related to various forms of preschool to the general public, dating back to the establishment of the first preschools in the 19th century.

Theoretical framework The theoretical framework of the project is based on the fact that photographic images depict a physical reality, while at the same time being inherently constructed. As historical sources, this implies that photographic images contain information about the look of things at a particular point in time, and visualise the image that the maker intended to present to the public/viewer. As the intent is to explore an extended period of time, the use of path dependency theory could be useful in theorising continuity and change in the visualisation of preschool.

Methodological design The archival ethnography is founded on previous findings and the assumption that media, including films, were important parts of marketing or propaganda to convey ideas and ideals about different forms of preschool to the public. Historical sources will be located and analysed on the broad basis of such questions as: How was visual culture aimed at the general public used to promote preschool? What ideals about preschool and conceptions of preschool childhood were conveyed through the media? Expected conclusions/findings Guided by archival findings and preliminary analysis, the project's starting point is newsreels from the interwar period and their entanglement with various other visual media. Here an initial finding is a connection between newsreels from 1929 and 1930 of HSB's Lekstuga Färjan and Stockholmsutställningen 1930 . Photographs and texts in the exhibition catalogue show that there was a complete, what we would now call a preschool department in one of the exhibition halls. As the exhibition had around 4 million visitors, the idea of a preschool, what preschool could look like must have become widespread. The impact of Stockholmsutställningen 1930 and its portrayal of preschools as part of modernity and in shaping a favourable perception of preschool education among the general public is an example of an overlooked visualised event in preschool history. Relevance to Nordic educational research The study of visual (archival) materials of preschools from media will provide new knowledge about how preschool was introduced to the public as the place and norm for a good childhood, adding to previous studies that mainly examined the texts of the profession or politics. This analysis will reveal the ideals created around preschools and the childhoods they offer and provide insight into how, when, where, and why the media features this. Investigating the visualisations of preschool as it shifted from an exception to a societal norm is crucial for comprehending the preschool of today, yesterday, and tomorrow. Since 2018, preschool has been explicit as education and since 1998 there has been a curriculum, so it is relevant to place it in an educational historical context.

This article demonstrates an analytical and arts-based approach using drawings as tools to retain the visual information in a film visual, throughout the research process as well as for thinking. The approach brings in methods and theory from disciplines using visual materials as data: Visual Anthropology, Ethnomethodology/Conversation Analysis (EMCA), Art History and Film Studies. Furthermore, tools and reflections on how to sketch, draw and construct analytical images using paper and pen, technical tools such as features in movie players and image processing software, and basic drawing apps on a tablet, are presented and demonstrated in empirical examples from a study on preschool naptime. The drawn analysis are abstractions of the visual data where certain visual aspects, visible in the film, are re-used thus creating a direct link between the film and the drawing that preserve visual aspects of the original throughout the research process. This gains new knowledge, further and different knowledge than just using words. Also, the drawings address ethical issues as children's right to anonymity in a study. The visual remake is proposed as a term for this arts-based approach to highlight, enhance and visualise the features of films that are of special interest to an enquiry and facilitate comparative analysis.

There has been a long tradition of documenting activities in early educational settings. In this chapter, we analyse documentation from a preschool context in Sweden during the 1930s to explore the ways in which student teachers described children’s ways of looking. The Vienna-based child psychologist Elsa Köhler (1879–1940) was invited to the small town of Norrköping and stimulated the student teachers to perform this documentation. There are more than 370 handwritten documents preserved in the city archive. We use the children as the focal point of an analysis based on how student teachers documented what the children looked at and how they looked. This means that the results show the interaction between children and adults from a perspective that takes children’s actions as the starting point. The analysis shows how the children acknowledged the observing student teachers and trained teachers who were in the events observed, how children took an interest in the student teachers’ and teachers’ observing practices, and how the children tried out and performed similar practices. We want to stress the importance of including the children in the intricate web of social interaction that is enabled by this approach to analysis, and how it makes available unexpected descriptions of both children’s and adults’ looking practices in institutional settings in the past.

In previous historical studies on preschools, the main sources are texts; photos are used merely as illustrations. Inspired by the idea to use visual materials to study the look of the past by scrutinising historical photos and films of naptime in preschool, this article will shed light on preschool as an institution and on the materiality of naptime practices. The data comprise of historical photographs and films from the period 1900–1970 (in total 14 films and approximately 200 photographs that, in one way or the other, depict naptime: adult and child interaction, the beds' constructions, the material organization of rooms and naptime routines). By using visual analyses, visualizations and the notion of path dependence, the article shows how the everyday practice of napping was carried out in the historical preschool in relation to questions of continuity and change. The results suggest that the design of beds, as child-sized and easy to move and store, can be understood as defining the institution as a preschool with play and educational practices as its main purpose. At the same time, however, the beds themselves indicate that care, as sleep or napping, was an essential practice in historic preschools.