Preschoolers' ideas about bear

Bears evoke different feelings in people, ranging from fear to compassion. The children's opinion is mainly impacted by various media, stories, and books. Some people equate this animal with their teddy bear, which they need to fall asleep, while others have negative images, since they picture it as the biggest danger living in a dark forest. We wish to change the child’s stereotypical view through active learning, as the child is comprehensively, mentally, and emotionally activated and it becomes of personal significance for them and is part of real life circumstances. This diploma thesis focuses on how children acquire knowledge through active learning. Through individual interviews we discovered to what extent the children are familiar with the bear as an animal and what is their relationship towards this animal. The sample consisted of forty-four children, aged 5 to 6. We established that the children to a great extent do not have appropriate information about the bear and that their ideas involved stereotypes. On the basis of these findings we have designed and performed activities which helped children acquire knowledge about the bear through active learning. We focused in more detail to physical characteristics, feeding, habitat, its life during winter and the dangers related to bears. The activities were performed in an experimental group consisting of twenty-two children. For comparison we included a control group consisting of twenty-two children. After the activities were performed, we again conducted individual interviews and have made conclusions with regards to previous ideas on how the activities performed have impacted their knowledge of the bear. The analysis of the results of the experimental group has shown that the children have improved their knowledge of the bear and that the majority of the stereotypes regarding this animal has disappeared by means of active learning. The bear is an important animal for the functioning of the ecosystem and it is constantly present in Slovenia. But people often have wrong ideas about it, which impacts their relationship towards this animal. This negative relationship, along with the lack of knowledge, decreases the possibility of a quality cohabitation between man and bear. Since one’s attitude towards nature is formed in early childhood, it is necessary to start to acquire knowledge and to form a positive attitude towards nature in kindergarten. The reasonableness of this has also been confirmed by the results of my diploma thesis