The article deals with the topic of early literacy in Slovenia, focusing on the childs familiarity with the concept of print and the book. The first section sets out to define the notions of literacy, nascent literacy and early literacy. In the continuation, the article presents one of the instruments for assessing or verifying the childs familiarity with the concept of print and the book. It then goes on to present the results of research into the awareness of the concept of print and the book as an important aspect of early literacy in 535 children aged 56 years who attend 25 randomly selected Slovenian kindergartens. The results show that more than half of the children are able to grasp the structure of a book, and that more than half of them are capable of distinguishing between pictures and text, of recognising the direction of the print, and of determining the beginning and the end of a book, as well as being able to use literary terminology. As these results are unsatisfactory, we suggest adopting the method of so-called emphasised awareness-raising in the field of printed books, whereby the educator encourages the childs familiarity with print.
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