Creating a stimulating environment in the first age group in kindergarten

The basic approach of preschool children towards knowledge is active learning, through which they acquire new knowledge on various fields of development. Children have an intrinsic desire to explore. This means they involve spontaneously in several activities, mostly because of pleasure and satisfaction, using all their senses. They gain key learning experiences by handling with different natural and/or waste materials. It is the responsibility of adults to enable the children encouraging learning environment, which involves access to various materials, providing enough time for exploring them and bringing them to use, as well as encouraging their initiative to be active and make something on their own. My thesis consists of theoretical and empirical part. The theoretical part presents a child's development and learning process, and the meaning of active learning for a child's social, intellectual and physical development. The empirical part describes the use of activities in a group of 1-year old children. I described the approach – creating of encouraging learning environment at playtime with the youngest group of children by means of non-structural utensils (boxes of various shapes, sizes and materials). Based on written observations of children's play and interests I prepared several learning challenges and thus presented the characteristics of process development model of planning