‘And here is a caterpillar kindergarten’: Latin American children transforming school practices at home during the pandemic

The present ethnographic study was conducted in collaboration with thirty-five Latin American children from different countries during the period of school closures precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Through exchanges of multimodal texts (letters, text messages, photos, drawings, audios, videos) and virtual encounters, we sought to understand how these children reconstructed and transformed their schooling practices. Through our interactions in this constructed ethnographic field, we could observe how the children lived during the pandemic from their unique perspectives. Everyday school structures were incorporated within the children's embodiments and experiences at home, opening new opportunities for agency enactment, and expanding possibilities for learning and exploration. Their learning practices revealed a process of appropriation, merging what they already knew to new learning experiences that were created beyond the school as an institution or an abstract concept.