Constructing occasional toys from different materials in kindergarten

This diploma paper presents the building of everyday toys out of different types of materials in the kindergarten Ivančna Gorica. In the theoretical part I presented developmental features of children aged 4 to 6, the meaning of game for a child's development and some characteristics of toys and materials, which we used while creating toys in our kindergarten. I described the “active learning” or “research”, which helped encourage the children to start building toys. Within all these, I was following the kindergarten curriculum. In the empirical part of this paper, we learn about the survey titled »Let's make everyday toys« which helped me encourage 5 to 6 year olds to create toys from different materials by following the content from the fairy tale »Bobek and barčica«. In my diploma paper I pointed out the participation and autonomy shown by children in all phases of the research. Children were really helpful by bringing lots of materials in the kindergarten and according to their wish they created a book, a memory game, a little mill toy and boats. I noticed that in this age bracket, they are very skillful with tools such as scissors, hand saw … They were very proud of their new toys and they were trying them out in many different ways. When our project was already finished, I realized that one only needs a little bit of imagination and creativity in order to make various everyday toys together with the help of children and these are the toys that bring them great pleasure and satisfactio