Recognizing the attributes of life while breeding the animals who are temporarily brought from nature

A child can best learn the characteristics of the living with everyday breading of animals and growing plants. With this method the child gets to know the necessities for life of living beings and life processes like development, reproductions, eating. Along with these he also gets to know other terms and procedures of natural sciences, and animal breeding also encourages the improvement in other developing fields. Living beings also emotionally motivate the child for learning. In the thesis I researched, how much preschool children learn on the characteristics of living beings by animal breeding. For the breeding I did not choose pets, which are often bred in kindergartens (fish, turtles, hamsters), but emphasized breeding of organisms which we temporarily brought to the kindergarten from nature. In the playroom we bred a spawn and observed the development of frogs, we bred caterpillars and observed the development of the butterfly, and we bred ants. We prepared proper breeding containers for animals, fed them, observed them, made notes on changes in their development and returned them to the natural environment after some time. In the breeding time children gained experiences with living beings. They developed terms of natural science and scientific thinking. The comparison of the results of oral polling of children before and after the breeding showed that children gained knowledge in terms of natural sciences. I also acknowledged that children during the process of breeding animals formed a proper attitude towards living beings that we brought from nature and later returned