Summer in kindergarten

The concept of child participation in kindergarten in planning and implementing activities remains rather rare in everyday practice or fails to be implemented to the desired level. It is reasonable to question the discrepancy between priorities and practices. I believe that this may be due to the fact that teachers are often limited by instructions from their superiors in terms of activity planning, which reduces their options to harmonise their activities with initiatives, ideas and wishes of their children. A number of kindergarten activities were not selected neither by teachers nor by children, but by kindergarten principals. To provide an alternative to constant projects organised at the top, we present an example of good practice in the Najdihojca kindergarten, groups Aeternia 1 and 2, where we carried out an open-ended project of child participation entitled Summer in kindergarten. The teachers attempted to enable the children the most participation in their kindergarten life. The ideas of the children were noted on a poster and the children drew them on the poster as well. During summer, their ideas were put into practice the way they suggested. A couple of new ideas evolved throughout the project and they were included on the poster and also implemented. The children found it important that they could decide on the course of the activities. They also felt challenged and slightly uncertain, but they embarked on the project with joy. Groups Aeternia 1 and 2 are heterogeneous, which is why they dreamed up different ideas. Their ideas on the implementation were also different. Although younger children proposed activities that their older peers had already outgrown, the sense of accepting difference became very strong. Older children were respectful towards the ideas and patronising while taking part. The descriptive research method used in the thesis presents the implementation and evaluation of the project in order to determine how to increase participation, where children want to participate and how can open-ended projects be helpful in this respect