The kindergarten curriculum, which is the basis for planning activities in kindergarten, contains five areas. The area of movement is presented first, as it is the child’s primary need. The development of movement opens up new possibilities for him to get to know the world around him. However, we do not only associate movement with large movements, such as walking, but also the use of fine motor skills. Kindergarten professionals also play an important role in the development of these skills associated with children, and we can encourage this by preparing various activities. Another primary need of a child is the need to play, which is important to consider when planning any activity in kindergarten.
Just like with motion, the child also learns about various technical objects, procedures and materials on a daily basis. Nonetheless, because technical education is not an independent area in the curriculum for kindergartens, but only connects with others, educators often forget to plan directed technical education activities.
Because of that we focused on the material wood, as we want to encourage educators to reach for the materials that nature offers us. With the planned activities we want to encourage them to introduce the often forgotten techniques and give some interesting ideas for novice crafting with wood.
Thesis consists of theoretical and empirical work. In the theoretical part, we will present the importance of motion, play and technical education in the development of children, as well as key information about wood, which is good to know when using this material.
The empirical part includes the analysis of the survey questionnaire, with which we wanted to get to know the views of kindergarten teachers on the importance of developing fine motor skills, technical education and to check the frequency of working with wood. The second part presents the representation and implementation of activities
for preschool children in connection with wood, which we also critically evaluated based on the results of observations.
We found that educators in kindergarten know the importance of developing fine motor skills in early childhood and often carry out activities for this purpose. Rarely, however, do they associate this with technical education, which offers many opportunities for research, both in the context of directed activities as well as free play. With the activities of thesis, we offered children completely new experiences and introduced them to some highlights of technical education through play. The planned activities offer a lot of expansion and adaptation and can also be a starting point for educators to carry out technical education activities.
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