Technological literacy development of children aged four to six with multifunctional toy assistance

In the pre-school period play represents the main part of child's activities and it is also the child's necessity through which he expresses and gets to know himself and the world surrounding him. It is an internally motivated child's activity, which gives the child satisfaction and in which the child includes various play things, toys. Toy that enables a child various use also enables the development of different abilities and skills of a child, which significantly influence his subsequent cognitive development, his graphomotorics, and his performance at school. Toys with many functions have motivational influence on the child, as he detects a new use of individual functions and he is playing longer. With its use, children develop various skills and abilities that significantly influence the child's further development. In the theoretical part of the diploma thesis we focused on the play and the toy, their important role in the childhood period and technological literacy, which in today's world is of utmost importance. As we promote and emphasize the importance of reading literacy and literacy of pre-school children, it would also be necessary to encourage and influence the development of technological literacy of pre-school children, because only in this way children will be able to understand and act in today's technological world. In the empirical part, we presented the results of the questionnaire filled out by the professional staff of the Medvode Preschool. The research showed an understanding of the notion of technological literacy among the surveyed and a good idea about a technologically literate child. The research also showed for which purposes the professional staff of the kindergarten most commonly use multifunctional toys, what kind of an outer form of this kind of toy they would like to have and what functions of the toy they deem most important for them to be included in the multifunctional toy. They also proposed materials for its manufacture; wood. On the basis of the survey, we created a multifunctional toy "turtle", which we offered to children aged 4–6 years to play with. In addition to monitoring children play with this specifics toy, we also monitored the impact of its use on the development of children's technological literacy. The impact of the play with multifunctional toy has proven to be important in the development of the child's technological literacy. Observation and monitoring was carried out in the Medvode Preschool, Unit Ostržek