Featherwands can freeze you...

Featherwands Can Freeze You: How Young Children Compose Ephemeral Texts Through Digitally Mediated Play

Veena Vasudevan, University of Pittsburgh School of Education

Abstract: In this auto-ethnography I examine the critical literacies young children enact through play within their digitally mediated worlds. Specifically, through ethnographic vignettes I share everyday moments of play in my children’s lives (ages 3 and 5). The vignettes show how my children compose ephemeral texts in play by remixing and transmediating plot lines, concepts, images, sounds, and more, from their expansive mediascapes. I argue that we should appreciate how young learners—even those not yet reading with fluency—are engaged in critical literacies, and that when we value children's digitally mediated play as critical composition, we create opportunities for children to be positioned as writers and readers. This study also shows how children’s home cultures, funds of knowledge, and out-of-school experiences enrich and contribute to the ephemeral texts children are composing each day, calling on educators to create classrooms that nurture and celebrate children’s play and literacies.

Keywords: Digitally-mediated play, playful literacies, transmediation, funds of knowledge, critical literacies

To cite this article: Vasudevan, V. (2025). Featherwands can freeze you: How young children compose ephemeral texts through digitally mediated play. The Critical Social Educator, 3(2), 70-81. https://doi.org/10.70707/ncsk11243f