Use of dance elements in dance theater by students of pre-school education

Educators in Slovenian nurseries plan their work in accordance with valid Curriculum for nurseries. In it different experts, based on detailed and extensive analyses on development of a child and his learning and with basic goal of optimal development, have positioned process-developmental goals on 6 curricular fields: language, mathematics, exercise, nature, society and art. Strict separation amongst them does not make sense, because connecting small parts of the content makes it more understandable and more useful knowledge. Because of the specifics of development of a preschool child, interdisciplinary connecting is therefore even more reasonable and/or even urgent. Ways of simultaneous dealing of different curricular fields are different. One of the possibilities is the use of dance, which falls in with the field of arts. The field of art is made from different activities: art and design, musical and audio-video, drama and dance. In the dance activities we place playful games, folk dances, dance theaters and viewing of dance shows and staging different kinds of rituals, characters, emotions, nature and occupation through a creative movement. Prerequisite for planning for educational work is the knowledge of different activities for dance expression. In a master’s thesis I therefore introduce dance expression in nursery. Namely I focus on what is dance, how does it affect human body in a whole, how it is the best way to plan for it and what to look out for. Through the understanding of a locomotor development, I place the creative movement as an effective method of work in a nursery and school. I introduce possible planning of interdisciplinary connecting to activity of dance creation with concrete examples of dance stimulations. In determining the role of the educator with the choice of the way of working with children and his/her autonomy, I am looking into the meaning of subjective theories. I believe these theories have a profound influence at the guidance of the pedagogic work. Because they are developing longer and affect the studies, I wish to find out how many and which dance elements future educators use in their work with children, of they consider the age difference between children and what are the weaknesses in their knowledge. The research is designed quantitatively. 30 videotapes of the child dance performances, that students of first year on student practice filmed between years 2000 - 2005, are scooped in a sample. I made the systematic analysis for the in advance made metric instrument for determining the chosen dance elements and other chosen variables (age of children, teaching methods etc.) The results are indicating, that students put more emphasis on the text and talk during the performance, then on encouraging children to dance expression. The analysis of the recordings also indicated that there is no difference between older and younger children in creative movement, although that was expected because of the locomotor and integral development. I searched the reasons for this in lack of knowledge of students and lack of practice with children in kindergartens