Thirty children, 7.5 to 8.5 years, in two classrooms in a Catholic school trying to implement an informal curriculum were studied. The classrooms were not "exemplary"; The children had lower-middle-class origins. Each child was observed under free-choice conditions for approximately 80-90 minutes over a 3-month period. Two-minute narrative records were collected and later coded with regard to activity categories, social interactions, distractions. A battery of tests including subscales from the WISC, Matching Familiar Figures Test of cognitive style and items from Wallach and Kogan's associational fluency tasks were also given to each child. The various observational and test scores were correlated. WISC Vocabulary scores and MFF scores produced the major significant correlates with activities. For instance, a pattern emerges in which children with higher vocabulary scores and reflective cognitive styles pursue more traditional academic tasks, particularly reading activities and also spend more of their time focused on activities without companions. The pattern of correlations regarding IQ is strikingly similar to that often found in traditional highly structured classrooms. Possible sources of these similarities, including the ecologies of the particular classes studied are explored. (Author/MS)