Meals at kindergarten are priviledged contexts for the linguistic exchange. The purpose of this paper is to present the result of the analysis of the interaction in these situations, particularly in those that provide an opportunity for the linguistic and cognitive development of the children. A qualitative analysis was carried out using the constant comparative method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) over a corpus of 25 videofilmed meals in 8 classrooms of 4 and 5 year -old children at Kindergartens that receive children form urban marginal populations. The results of the analysis allowed to identify and to characterize four types of situations according to the topic in focus: the food, other events occured at kindergarten, games with sounds and narratives of personal experiences. In every case the cognitive operations favored and the opportunities provided for the use of descontextualized language are analyzed.