On Unplanned Educational Activities in the Preschool: Dealing with Competence in the Course of Packing up a Game

This article concerns a learning environment in a preschool which includes a preschool teacher and two bilingual children. The article details how an activity of counting is introduced in the course of packing up a game and increasingly turns into an activity of calculation. Thereby the activity engages the participants to demonstrate their competences in terms of language and mathematics rather than (merely) manipulating, arranging and counting objects. The analysis thus exemplifies how, by the use of language as a resource, an interaction in a preschool occasions an activity that may be seen as aiming at a transition between preschool and primary school. Simultaneously, however, it becomes clear that, possibly because this is an unplanned activity, the outcome of this activity may be unequally beneficial for the participants.