Marta Silene Ferreira BARROS; Dayanne VICENTINI; Ana Letícia FERREIRA; Maíra Dellazeri CORTEZ and Natália Navarro GARCIA
RIAEE – Revista Ibero-Americana de Estudos em Educação, Araraquara, v. 18, n. 00, e023012, 2023. e-ISSN: 1982-5587
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21723/riaee.v18i00.17690 13
that "[...] the history of mankind can be told through the history of ceramics, extinct cultures
can be known through works made of clay and left by them". It is thus observed that the
symbolic charge contained in this material and the huge compendium of techniques available
in the handling of clay constitute extremely significant knowledge and practices, especially
when it comes to young children who need qualified appropriations for their full development.
Thus, taking into account the deep relationship of mankind with this material, we
consider its pedagogical and cultural potential for the qualitative development of the most
different creative potentialities of the child, since besides its expressive presence in human
productions gathered in the most different cultures and historical periods, this material has much
to contribute to the development of children's motor skills, as well as it acts directly in the
promotion of the subject's imaginative processes, since its plastic possibilities are more varied,
since this material transits in different physical states, including through extremely stimulating
transformative processes: curiosity and creativity. Moreover, this practice in the pedagogical
context favors the art-education relation, because, according to Brazil (1998, p. 87, our
translation), the activities related to the Arts are sometimes despised in the pedagogical context,
"[...] understood only as mere hobbies in which activities of drawing, pasting, painting and
modeling with clay or dough are devoid of meaning". It is necessary, therefore, to give meaning
to such practices for children, especially in Early Childhood Education, through the
intentionality, which is only effective through teacher qualification and didactic planning.
Nevertheless, it is also essential to consider that by manipulating clay or even modeling
clay, different stimuli are evoked in the child, especially the imagination, the construction of
new possibilities of action and ways to organize elements of the environment, thus favoring
their social interaction, because such symbolic representations help to express how they see the
current reality and the elements that compose it.
Ostetto and Leite (2004, p. 33, our translation) reveal that, "[...] by recording the
lived/imagined experiences, they leave their passage marked, the way they think and how they
are at that moment. What privileges is the path and not its point of arrival". Consequently, when
this child produces, in a free way, he is building, in himself, security, proving to himself that
he is capable of creating, combining, exploring and imagining. In the same sense, Lemos and
Zamperetti (2015, p. 5, our translation), point out that
[...] clay provides, in the direct work with its mass, the conditions to dominate
materiality, since it is a living material, which by itself has an action that leads
to equilibrium. Kneading the earth and shaping it are primitive gestures, which
considerably influence the coordination of all movements.