By observing children aged 4 and 5 within the highly organized space of an early years classroom, we can explore the ways in which young children's desire to express cultural agency drives them to draw upon space and materials in order to make meaning and examine the ways in which space and resources mediate such experiences. These observations, it is suggested, can provoke discussions that support understandings of early literacy as a collaborative and collective act, intricately connected with children's cultural experiences, their lives and identities and, importantly, always mediated by early years classroom spaces. By recognizing these things we are in a better position to expand current dominant notions of literacy development and question taken-for-granted early years practices around literacy pedagogy.