Children’s folk music in second age in kindergarten

In the thesis I researched the representation of children’s folk music in kindergarten. In the theoretical part I discussed the traditional folk music and put emphasis on children’s folk music, dances, counting rhymes, games and musical instruments. Besides that I also researched how often folk music appears in the curriculum for kindergartens, the technical literature and the didactic materials for preschool education. The empirical part contains quantitative and qualitative research. In the quantitative part of the research I analysed the results of the interview with preschool teachers about including children’s folk tradition in kindergarten, which I gained with a survey questionnaire. In the qualitative part of the research, I was finding out how interested children are in activities that have to do with folk tradition through analysing diary notes, photographs, audio notes and children’s statements. In the framework of the research I carried out more activities, through which children learned about children’s folk music, dances, counting rhymes, games and musical instruments. I found out that children have an interest in learning folk tradition, that they receive it with joy and they quickly assimilate it. Preschool teachers also have an interest in including children’s folk music in the kindergarten, but they have several problems with it. Among those are the most distinct ones, that they have too little prior knowledge, that in the curriculum for kindergartens is not enough emphasis on this area, that there are not enough seminars on this subject and that there is too little material with children’s folk music available. As a consequence, the folk music tradition is rarely included in the kindergarten’s planned activities, or it is only inferior quality. In the end, I interpreted the results of both researches based on the relevant references and technical literature