In my thesis, I explored youth literature as part of the Slovenian folk tradition and presented some of the most prominent collectors of folk tradition in our country. In the theoretical part, I concentrated on children's poetry and Slovenian folk poetry and addressed Slovenian children's folk poetry in more detail.
In the empirical part of the thesis, I involved children in the exploration of their literary aesthetic experiences of children's folk songs collected in the humorous anthology Enci benci na kamenci (1990, 1998, 2007, 2018, 2020) by Roman Gašperno. I classified five poems according to Karel Štrekelj (1908) by selecting one poem from each collection of Enci benci na kamenci (1990, ...) and placing it in the appropriate category. I obtained five categories: humorous song, teasing song, song about animals, counting-out rhyme, and song about food. I used qualitative research and critically evaluated the children’s understanding of song lyrics by analysing their response to partially structured questions about each song. I conducted group interviews, recorded their answers on the telephone and transcribed them. Based on their experience of the texts, we carried out five performing activities that were based exclusively on their ideas and were artistic in nature. The children were free to choose from a variety of materials and objects to perform the songs.
Three girls and two boys, ranging in age from four to five years, were included in the research sample. The children were from the same age grouping.
Using the research, I found that children respond positively to children's folk songs, i.e. they express feelings such as joy, sadness, amazement, oddity, etc. They successfully manifest their experiences through performing activities, which are intertwined with all fields of the Kindergarten Curriculum.
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