Dance creativity as a response to images of imagination trees

Throughout the years of working in a kindergarten, I established that dance belongs to those artistic activities that can meet the criteria of modern approaches to working with preschool children. The Trees of imaginary stories by Prof. Gordana Schmidt are appropriate in this respect. The theoretical part of the thesis presents dance and creative movement and places them into the kindergarten curriculum. Moreover, it outlines the connection between dance and other activities and provides insight into a comprehensive educational approach enabled by creative movement. It lists the objectives of dance as a type of art and points to the symbolic value of expressive movement. The empirical part of the thesis involves a practical example of using the imaginary trees with preschool children. It presents the stories that were the result of the children’s creativity and points to the unlimited possibilities of using dance as a means to convey the content of a story. In addition, the thesis describes concrete examples to prove that using the pictures of imaginary trees to encourage dancing does have influence on all areas of child development