The background of this article is that the educational sciences of today give priority to a wide concept of the text and researchers in Sweden proclaim a horizontal concept of the text for the same purpose of giving equal epistemological status to verbal and semiotic sign-action. Today’s ‘language turn’ and ‘visual turn’ do not only include the linguistic and the figurative picture but also the materials and its texture. The idea of this study is to inquire how small children use aesthetic materials for action and meaning and what teachers do and think about this. The meaning potential is the tension between the image’s character levels, the child’s lifeworld and the teachers’ subject-specific discourse with the child. The main purpose is to learn about how the zone of proximal communication between children and children’s pictures and teachers might become more stable. Therefore I find the meaning potential of interest to a pragmatic inquiry. The design is inspired from action research. The result features the children’s orientation to sign-mindedness from the ages of one to five as well as the teachers’ reflections on their own progress in meeting young children’s action regarding material to give them support in learning and development.