Huts and heartache: The affordance of playground huts for legal debate in early childhood social organisation

This article discusses the way in which four-year-old children engaged in the complex co-production of rules and social governance in their primary school playground in Wales, UK. Through an inductive investigation into children's everyday social interactions at morning break time the child's view of their spatial affordances can be revealed. These affordances are the spaces the children talk into being (Heritage, 1978) and to what end. By making explicit reference to the wooden huts in their co-production of playground rules and governance the children talked those spaces into being and made them noticeable as important places for the practice of such agency in their everyday social organisation process.

► Four-year-old children were observed in their primary school playground in Wales. ► Findings revealed playground huts being talked into action in the social organization process. ► Children's co-construction of rule making and use of spatial affordances in their everyday social worlds is revealed.