This text is a part of doctoral research conducted in a public institution of early childhood education, in Florianopolis, with a group of 12 girls and 3 boys aged two and three years. In the said research, in order to bring a description from the perspective of children, methodological procedures from ethnography were used, such as written, photographic and filmic records. In data generation, the category gender became evident as a possibility and as a limit for the social action of children. It was also evident that the belonging to and the notions of gender involve a variety of knowledge and social and cultural elements. In this sense, based on research data, it was intended to bring elements that pointed and indicated what children knew and learned about gender and the uses they made of such knowledge in the relations with their peers and with adults and their possibilities and limits of social action.
early childhood education; gender relations; social action