Creative work of children aged 4 through 5 years at modelling with wooden semi-finished products

This paper tries to present the term creativity, developmental characteristics of children, aged from 4 to 5, basic properties of wood and wood products. The second part of the paper presents the results of a survey that was filled out by professional workers and children's design activities using semi-finished wood products. The aim of the paper is to present the creative work of children, aged from 4 to 5. As creativity depends on many factors, we must be made aware of these factors and provide children with an experience that increases their creativity. The paper also aims at determining what importance professional workers attribute to encouraging creativity in preschool children. We wanted to determine whether they encourage creativity and, in doing so, what materials they perceive as important. We sent out a survey to three kindergartens in Ljubljana. The results of the survey show that all professional workers think that wood as a material is very important and useful; we therefore decided to provide children with semi-finished wood products and encourage their creativity in design activities. The first part of the paper, which is theoretical, presents creativity, factors that affect it and ways to encourage creativity. We also present the results of the survey investigating creativity in relation to playing materials. Basic developmental characteristics of children, aged from 4 to 5, are outlined, as are basic features of wood. The paper continues with a presentation of different semi-finished wood products. The second part of the paper presents the results of the survey. We were interested in viewpoints of professional workers regarding children's creativity and what importance they attribute to semi-finished wood products used in the preschool period. With the help of the survey, we determined that all professional workers interviewed encourage children's creativity and that wood is more frequently used than other materials for work with children. All professional workers had an approximate idea of what a semi-finished wood product is. In the kindergarten, we carried out a multiday project, where children put together home-made products. Prior to the project, we made six different products, designed to ensure multiple assembly, without the use of polyvinyl acetate glue. We also prepared different forms of semi-finished wood products from waste wood pieces, which they could put together as they wished. In doing so, they could use different connecting materials: wooden dowels, elastic bands, cords and wires. We observed their independent designing and encouraged their creativity. This paper seeks to encourage professional workers to use waste wood pieces from wood processing and other unused semi-finished and finished wood products in order to encourage creativity in preschool children