Feeling, Wondering, Sharing and Constructing Life: Aesthetic Experience and Life Changes in Young Children’s Drawing Stories

Abstract

This paper explores the nature of young children’s aesthetic experience and the ways in which they narrate their life changes within spontaneous drawing stories. The drawing stories were generated during a period of close to 1 year in the home of a mother with two young children. The theoretical and methodological basis of this study is narrative research and the view of children is as competent participants, constructing the knowledge of their childhood. The study highlights the importance of taking young children’s holistic and embodied way of living into account. It also emphasizes that young children’s aesthetic experience, often arising in action, is a vital part of their construction of knowledge. Methodologically and theoretically, this study points out the importance of listening to children’s multimodal narrating as a tool for understanding young children’s processes of responding to life changes, and for enabling young children’s voices in supportive ways.