Lived experiences of babies in an Early Childhood Center in Belo Horizonte

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the lived experiences of a group of babies in a collective context of education and care. Based on the dialogue between Cultural-Historical Theory and Ethnography in Education, we followed a group of 13 babies, aged between 10 months to 1 year and 2 months, for six months, seeking to understand their experiences in this context. The empirical material was built through filmic and photographic records, fieldnotes and semi-structured interviews with adults. The babies approached each other provoked by physical touch, cultural artifacts and initial play in the infant’s room. We argue that approaching each other can be understood as the movement performed by babies, constituting a semantic field through the lived experiences in that context and enabling the relationship between them. In this context, a representative history of the lived experiences constituted in the infant’s room was selected, which revealed acts of care through which two babies, Ícaro and Giulia, initiated and sustained their relationships in the educational space. The analyzes reveal (i) the attractive force of cultural artifacts; (ii) the diversity of activities listed in the nursery routine; (ii) the great value in the relationship with the teachers; (iii) the fleeting nature of babies’ interactive dynamics.