Abstract:

Children encounter the concept of whole and its parts during spontaneous play but also by observing life around them (mother chopping an apple, father repairing a toy). Very small children understand everything they perceive as a whole at first, taking it often out of its context. With time, children discover through decomposition that the whole is comprised of parts. Thus, decomposition of the whole is a natural activity, and the first one that a small child carries out. In nursery schools of Czechia, focus is on activities related to assembly of the whole (composition), as well as their specific forms such as completion, reproduction and reconstruction. Recomposition is another suitable activity at it consists of repeated decomposition and reassembly of a whole, whereby the whole is disassembled into more parts with each decomposition.

Multiple nursery schools in Czechia were part of an experiment whose scope was children’s manipulation with the whole and its parts. This experiment included children of three age groups (3 to 4-year-olds, 4 to 5-year-olds and 5 to 6-year-olds) and aimed at evaluating the skill level of children in given age groups when working with the whole and its parts. Four tasks with three subtasks of increasing complexity were created for this experiment. Every child solved the subtasks progressively until they became too difficult. The tasks were focused on completion of the whole; on reconstruction where the whole had to be recreated from memory and small deviations were allowed; on reproduction where the whole was created based on a model; and on recomposition. Children solved the tasks using manipulation or graphical processing. 67% of children were successful at completion of a whole, 63% of respondents successfully performed reconstruction. The success rate was 59% for reproduction but only 67% for recomposition. It was therefore concluded that it is necessary to include more reproduction activities in pre-school education.

Keywords:

Nursery school, whole, parts, composition, decomposition.