Representation of physics-related content in kindergarten

In preschool years, children are capable of learning and creating and able to memorize facts. Parents and preschool workers can observe a child’s potential, keep track of it, nurture it and help develop it or just let it develop on its own. It is important that we recognize such potentials in every child and help them realize it, because this is the basis for future learning, understanding and knowledge. Understanding nature is the foundation of life-long learning and the preschool period is a very important time in a child’s development. We must let children the initiative in discovering nature and help them and encourage them in these endeavours. The purpose of this thesis is to determine how preschool workers include lessons on natural sciences (especially physics) in everyday curriculum. We wanted to find out what topics they cover and how they cover them as well as reasons why they may not include them. In the theoretical part we present topics of natural sciences which are included in the preschool curriculum and the importance of covering such topics in the preschool period. In the empirical part we demonstrate the analysis of the questionnaire that was given out to preschool workers about their knowledge of physical topics and their inclusion in everyday curriculum. The results showed that preschool workers rarely include physical topics or not at all. If they decide to include them, they do it because they find them interesting and they know them well. The main reason for not including physical topics is a bad knowledge of such topics