What is Peace to Five year Old Children?

Here is what some of the children in the Nook classroom said about peace when I challenged them to make signs that could bring peace to the community. Some of these signs are silly, some earnest. I wonder about how some of the children are grappling with my expectations versus their own wish to play rough or to play through some of the big concepts around peace and it's opposites.    (click on an image to see it bigger)

How will the children's understandings about peace grow and change after thinking and talking about it this year? I picture four and five year old children, newly emerged from infancy and parallel play, looking around and seeing the great world containing both good and bad, people with lots of power and those with very little. They've learned that sometimes there are things they can do to be heard, to get responses, to get what they want. Other times they don't get what they want no matter what strategies they try. That's a lot to figure out! I can see that children are holding two ideas about peace and war at the same time. There is real war and peace, and there are the "war" like games they often play outside. These children have coined the word "fightful" for that kind of play. They want us to see that sometimes playing fight-fully is fun! I see that these ideas are some of the most important to four and five year old children.  Children's theories and definitions expressed in their conversations about good and bad, fightful and peaceful are provisional and leave lots of room for dialog and learning.