For the purpose of understanding how different situations afford children to make meaning, we compare children’s self-expression in drawings to their statements during interviews. In particular, we study how two different activities interact and enable children differently to make meaning about the human body. We observe the children’s meaning-making as they worked in pairs to explain the body drawings that they did prior to the interviews. Meaning-making was studied by using a PEA, an analysis facilitating understanding of how relations are established in a developing conversation, and more generally providing understanding from a child perspective. The results indicate that children use several types of reasons in the two different situations; namely, social, artistic, practical, empirical and memory reasons are identified. Social reasons refer to statements belonging to the social context and items that were described as inappropriate to express. Artistic reasons were interpreted from aesthetic judgements, referring to the artistic quality of the drawing. Practical reasons were given in situations where children expressed, for example, that the space limited their opportunities to draw. Empirical reasons are built on children’s statements referring to picture details that are identified by pointing or touching their own body. Memory reasons are involved in all the situations in which children explained that they had left something out in the picture. We suggest that children interpret situational aspects and make judgements concerning the relevance of their different reasons. This research will hopefully facilitate children’s understanding of interview questions and also to improve researchers’ understanding of children’s ability to grasp relevant details prior to their response (or participation).