My diploma thesis with the title Spatial Orientation in Preschool Education deals with orientation, which is defined as ability and includes two important terms: aptitude and a sense of location. It denotes having the ability to orientate yourself in unfamiliar terrain. Orientation is especially important for us to know where we are and where we need to go in order to reach our destination by means of our chosen path. The child faces orientation challenges already by just observing and exploring the space around him. For children, these are important abilities and skills, crucial in the development of spatial perception. By listening to directions and moving around the room, the child learns orientation in his surroundings. At first, the child learns orientation by positioning himself, then in relation to other persons and also objects. Later he learns orientation in space and finally on the plane. In the empirical part of my thesis, I address four research goals. The purpose of the first research objective is to investigate the understanding of space or its laws in children aged 5–6 years. After performing the activity of the description of the route model, it is evident that children understand the concept of orientation, but cannot yet verbally explain its meaning. The second objective is to investigate the progress of a child’s understanding and the use of terms to describe the position of objects in space. We can see that children use few terms to describe the layout of the site, some children also misuse the terms. The purpose of the third research objective is to become acquainted with the difficulties that children face in making and reading a model. It is observed that children have more difficulty reading the models themselves than making them. The last research objective is to determine the child's representation of space (topological, Euclidean). It turns out that most children can be classified as transitioning to a schematic stage - plot drawing, which can be interpreted as a topological understanding of space with the initial characteristics of Euclidean space).
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