This paper examines some of the conversational skills manifested by children within a nursery group as they organize their own activities among themselves and cope with social and didactic demands of adults. Among the features examined are the number of active and passive participants within conversing groups, the intentions and pragmatic knowledge of the participating speakers, their ability to use shared procedures and structural features of language to get their meaning across, and their ability to play a variety of roles as initiators and respondents, as information givers and information seekers, as action initiators and collaborators, and as role claimants and role assigners. Attention is also paid to whether remarks are addressed dyadically or to more than one person collectively and to the fitting or remarks of alternating speakers one with another within conversational texts, by reaction markers and acknowledgements such as yes and no, by elliptical abbreviation, and by response elicitors such as questions and tags. The psychological implications of the process of maintaining a joint field of reference and shifting attention within and between fields of reference is explored and a model of the interlacing of interpersonal and contextual meaning is considered. (Author/CM)