”Man får bara vara med om man har två såna här dinosaurier…” : Den fria lekens regler och strukturer

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this study is to examine how children interact with each other in the free play. My questions have been which access strategies children use, how they use secondary adjustments and how they use language in order to gain position and status in the play. The study has been characterized by a qualitative research-oriented method, with interpretive analysis and qualitative interviews. The data collection was done through observations and conversations with children about their play. The children in the study are between the ages of three and five-years-old. The weakness of this study has been that I haven’t had enough children to observe and interview, because I didn’t get the parents approval to use their children in the study. This might have affected the result. The theories I have used in the analysis has been Löfdahl's theories of secondary adjustments and play acts and Corsaro's theories about how children's use of language in play varies depending on what status they have and his theories of access strategies.  The study shows that children are aware of what social codes they should follow in their pre-school groups. The results showed that the children have developed various secondary adjustments, both to teachers and other children in the group. The most common entry strategy to gain access to a play was request for access. This was such an approved strategy, the children rarely tried to gain access by any other strategies. The children showed awareness of which status the other children in the group had, children with a higher status, more often were allowed to have the control in play.