My work focuses on early literacy development in rural Tanzania. International initiatives and interventions in this area largely focus on assumptions about children’s foundational literacy learning drawn from Anglo-American contexts and overlook evidence of how children interact with and use printed materials in their family and community. I use a socio-culturally situated and multimodal framing of literacy which draws on children’s play and their religious and community practices, and how their relationships with siblings, peers and family members support this early literacy learning and development.