In the master's thesis, I reasearched the importance of fairy tales for understanding, recognizing and expressing emotions in children, at the beginning of primary school. Children around the age of 7 are particularly sensitive and emotional, as they are only learning and getting to know about the world around them, social norms and also their inner world. This is a time of change for them, since they come to school, where they meet new people and the rules they need to follow. Fairy tales can help children solve both internal and external conflicts that they encounter when entering school.
In the theoretical part, I presented the development of emotions, their characteristics and the role of adults in this development. I also explained the importance of fairy tales and their role in emotional development. In the empirical part, through qualitative research, I determined how fairy tales promote expression, recognition and understanding of emotions at the beginning of schooling. I conducted partially structured interviews with four teachers from the 1st to the 2nd grade, and a set of four workshops for children, of which the purpose is to obtain information on understanding, recognizing and expressing emotions in children, through visual materials, tasks, observation during the workshop and short interviews with children.
Through the research, I wanted to explore the useful value of a fairy tale as a source for discussing emotions in children and to show how it can be involved in social pedagogical work in order to promote the child's emotional development. The purpose is to present a form of work that actively involves children in discussing emotions and presenting their understanding of the basic emotions that are described in fairy tales (anger, fear, joy, sadness). Based on the interviews and workshops I can conclude that teachers mainly use fairy tales in accordance with the curriculum and interdisciplinary integration. The teachers recognize a special role of a fairy tale on different areas of the child's development. They believe that fairy tales promote child's creativity and critical thinking. They have a positive effect on children and teach them different values, virtues and social skills. Through fairy tales children can learn about emotions. The teachers set out a positive , negative or even emotional response to fairy tales. The children accepted the workshop very well. Most of them participated in them. From the observation of the workshops, the analysis of the tasks and short conversations with children I can summarize that the children recognized all basic emotions that were in foreground of individual stories. Some children recognized also other emotions in the fairy tales. They expressed emotions in accordance with definitions of expressing emotions except sadness where I could see more unsuitable expressions of sadness in comparison to the workshops about joy, fear and anger. Similar findings where in recognizing situations in which children express basic emotions. The most unsuitable refrences according to definitions where of sadness.
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