Children's collective activities and peer culture in early literacy in American and Italian preschools

Recent work on early literacy has stressed the child's active nature in the learning process and has studied the effects of including children's peer interests in literacy curricula. In this article, the authors extend this work by examining American and Italian children's early literacy awareness and early literacy activities in preschools and the Italian children's transition from early to advanced literacy activities as they move from the preschool to elementary school. The findings reveal that children consistently appropriate literacy activities and knowledge in formal lessons and then use, refine, and extend these activities in the peer culture. The authors consider the implications of these findings for theoretical work on children's peer cultures and for preschool and elementary school literacy curricula.