By

ii This research is an eight-month ethnographic study of preschool children s play narratives. Children s play narratives are examined over time and across situations in the daily life of one preschool classroom to uncover the emotional themes of the play narratives as well as the social work of the emotional themes (e.g., build relationships, negotiate power, & construct social identities). The researcher visited the classroom two to three times per week over the course of eight months. Data collection methods included participant observation, video-taping, video-revisiting with children and formal and informal interviews with teachers. Findings revealed that children used specific play narratives, defined as anchor play narratives, which provided weight and grounding to their social relationships. Anchor play narratives were reoccurring themes that children returned to over and over again in the daily life of the classroom. A microethnographic approach to the discourse analysis of language use in the classroom was used examine two anchor play narratives: the kitty play narrative an