No descomeço era o verbo : um convite a Manoel de Barros para a roda de conversa na educação infantil

This study aimed to improve the reflection about the practice circle time in kindergarten, inspired in the poetic work of Manoel de Barros. Its goal was to collaborate with the construction of new meanings about circle time in the field of early childhood education, valuing the singular processes of the participants, formeding group dynamics fundamental to the human development, and electing poetry as a possible partner in such processes. This study argued, therefore, how the circle time can be outlined as an affective space of intervention and a 'place of childhood'. In Manoel de Barros’ poetry there is the powerful possibility of revealing a conception of childhood and subject that is social, cultural, historical, and that is constituted from the appropriation and the production of culture permeated by the formal and non-formal educational processes. This scientific research was supported by a conception of childhood other than a chronological determination, but rather as a human condition, considering its aionic temporality. The methodology was based on the qualitative epistemology of Gonzalez Rey, on its constructive-interpretative character and dialogical ways of the research. The cartography method was also adopted, which originates from the conceptual works of Deleuze and Guattari, and comprises research as an experience and an unfinished process. The construction of information was carried on through the following procedures: reading and analysis of the Political Pedagogic Project (PPP) of the school; participant observations in the classroom; writing the field diary; completion of 4 workshops introducing the poetry of Manoel de Barros through play; semi structured interviews with each participant teacher. The analysis and discussion of the information happened through the construction of categories and grouping them into three zones of meaning: silencing and control of childhood; childhood’s novelty; the circle time as space and time of meeting. This research to evidence the circle time as a privileged place of encounter between child and adult, considering the poetry as an opening to the creation and resistance to the instrumentalization of language hegemony imposed in schools, the mechanism of the practices, the control of the bodies and impossibility of to produce new meanings through the words and the thought. This research aimed to contribute especially to the listening and the reception of expressions of children and teachers, thinking the circle time and the school as places of childhood. The circle time is powerful space to experience of becominghuman, to construction of identity, to the word takes shape and create new events, often unpredictable and surprising. The circle time is child’s place that speaks like a child, thinks like a child and feels like a child. It is also adult’s place that speaks, thinks and feels as an adult. It is, above all, a meeting place of experience.