The purpose of this qualitative single case study was to explore what happened when preschool teachers engaged in multimodal meaning making around notions of literacy through visual art making. Eight participant preschool teachers attended 3 six-hour long multimodal workshops designed around social semiotic theory of multimodal communication (discourse, design, production, and presentation), coupled with sociocultural theory. This design enabled participants to engage in multimodal activities that afforded the opportunity to explore and analyze their epistemologies around literacy and visual art. Data included interviews, observation, artifacts, and field notes. Three intertwining themes were constructed from the data, which included the importance of illuminating hidden affordances, stretching notions of literacy as meaning making and, building a collaborative social third space for professional development. The themes highlighted the notion that when teachers become aware of how their own hidden affordances contribute to their literacy identities, it opens a window and slides back the door to recognize the affordances in the lives of the children they teach. Equally significant, it was only through the multimodal framework of discourse, design, production, and presentation through a sociocultural lens that these affordances became evident. This illustrates the need for teachers to have a collaborative social third space to self-reflect and examine their socio-cultural experiences through a multimodal lens. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]