Dance and play are intertwined - the most natural forms of play are found in dance, where the child develops his rhythm and shapes his imagination. Dance encourages children to move, develops children's thinking, enriches their imagination and expresses their emotions. At the same time, dance enables the child to participate in a group and build relationships.
In my thesis Springtime in dance and guided visualisation I focused on guided visualisation and dance, I also wanted to find out what difficulties the educator faces when introducing other areas of dance and visualisation, what children's reactions are to dance and guided visualisation, and I was also interested in the impact of guided visualisation on the interactional relationships in the group. Why dance and visualisation? Because children love dancing and creative movement and because I myself believe that there is a distinct lack of relaxation or relaxation games in kindergartens. That's why I decided to include guided visualisations in every activity, where the children could discover a new world of curiosity, but at the same time the relaxation itself has a positive effect on all other areas of the children's development and is a good element for further work.
In the theoretical part I described the Kindergarten Curriculum and the link between dance and other areas of the Curriculum, the role of the educator, dance and creative movement and visualisation.
In the rest of the thesis I described the impact of dance education, how dance education affects boys and girls, their attitudes and reactions, and I added relaxation techniques and activities.
In the empirical part I combined dance and guided visualisation with other areas of the Curriculum, I used a method where guided visualisation is an introduction to dance and creative expression, where the children were able to relax before the activity and this allowed them to be more creative, happy and satisfied. I myself was delighted with the results and the children's reactions as they were very creative. Children's curiosity is absolutely boundless and at the end of the activity I realised that the guided visualisation was definitely a good decision and a prelude to all the activities to come. The dancing and the creative movement itself also helped to keep the children well focused and involved.
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