This exploratory longitudinal inquiry explores children’s meta-linguistic talk and its chief features in a bilingual Arabic–Hebrew-speaking preschool located in central Israel, and attended by 29 children: 19 L1 Arabic-speaking children and 10 L1 Hebrew-speaking children. Data were gathered during one year and covered video-recordings of the children’s conversations. The following content categories were inferred from the children’s meta-linguistic talk: (1) language form focus; (2) discourse management: children as language policymakers – who speaks which language to whom and when, critical L2 skill assessment, and positive bilingualism concepts-; and (3) trouble in grasping the talk. Through active discourse management within intergroup contexts, children attempted to construct their social world and increase their ethnic identities. This kind of meta-linguistic talk handled such macro-level matters as minority−majority language status and L2 input asymmetry.