In the last decades, the pace of life has become faster and more stressful. People have lost touch with nature and in their daily lives fail to find time to visit forests. This is also the reality of our children. Instead of playing outside, they had tons of toys, which, however, did not arouse their interest in play. Forest pedagogy aims to solve this problem and teach children how to spend quality time. Forests offer a space for active learning as well as materials with which we can create and play. When planning activities, educators often forget about the simple forest environment. Forests offer children more than playrooms and facilitate activities easily. The purpose of the thesis was to research children's play and, with the help of forest-related activities, offer didactic toys to children aged 2–4, and observe them as they play with the toys.
The thesis consists of the theoretical part and of the empirical part. The theoretical part touches upon children's play and the toys children play with, and describes didactic toys in detail. It also refers to the developmental characteristics of children aged 2–4, to forest pedagogy, and to active learning. The empirical part firstly presents the survey questionnaire which was filled out by the professional staff of two kindergartens. Most of the respondents are well acquainted with forest pedagogy and include it in their work process. The results show that almost all of them have already made didactic toys for their work, most often sensory paths, puzzles, and memory matching games. Further on, the technical processes of making three didactic toys, The Forest Box, The Forest Sensory Memory, and The Forest Story quiet book, are presented. At the end, the activities done in three groups, the testing, and the play with the said didactic toys are described.
The thesis is intended for kindergarten professionals as they will find in it ideas for activities in connection with forest pedagogy as well as ideas for making didactic toys.
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