In Chile, during the radical governments (1938-1946), the Ministry of Public Education implemented several initiatives to expand and transform the school system, modernize pedagogical practices, and strengthen rural education. One of these actions was the creation of two syllabaries for urban and rural elementary school students. This article aims to analyze the representation of childhood in the syllabaries Mi tesoro (for urban schools) and Mi tierra (for rural schools), distributed between 1942 and 1950. The texts and illustrations were analyzed using the Content Analysis method. We concluded that these texts configured and disseminated, on the one hand, a vision of rural childhood linked to productivity and agricultural work; and, on the other hand, an ideology of urban childhood that not only had the possibility of appropriating literate culture, but also enjoyed recreational activities in the urban space.