Abstract:

Puppet play, especially puppets themselves, have a significant impact on preschool children and their versatile development. It expands their knowledge, it supports to form positive volitional character and emotional relationships not just between a child and an adult, but also between children themselves, which forms sense of peer collective. Puppets contribute to children’s happy life and with such a joyful, emotionally rich character, they represent an important tool in education regarding moral and aesthetic feelings of children. They also develop child’s imagination, fantasy and communication skills for the child speaks with the puppet and instead of the puppet, so he changes the role audience-actor.

The research focused on using puppets in kindergarten was carried out in the Czech Republic. There were 190 respondents, teachers from kindergarten in the Czech Republic. A questionnaire survey was chosen as the main method of the research. In the article, there will be introduced results of the this unique research, which proves that teachers, often taking children to the puppet theater, dedicate more time to puppet making either alone or together with children. On the other side, teachers who do not go to the theater with children look at puppets just like at toys only. Puppets in kindergarten are most often made of paper (63 %). The following often used material is fabric (47 %), then a bit less is used wood (12 %) and other materials (not specified). Some teachers have listed more materials as they do not make puppets from a single one. Regarding the type of puppets, teachers most often make hand puppets, that means puppet led from below. The hypotheses verification and also the verification of the initial statements led to the conclusion that the teachers who go to the theater with children do often make puppets with children too. The research carried out in kindergarten in the Czech Republic proved the meaning of visiting puppet theater and the meaning of puppets for both, teachers and children. It was confirmed that puppets help the teacher to communicate with children and that they play an important role in both, positive and negative, evaluations of children’s activities.

The article at the same time tries to point out the significance of puppets and their implementation into the Framework Education Programme for Czech kindergartens and it introduces puppets as a means of education in preschool facilities. In the end, there are several ideas how to make puppets on your own.

Keywords:

preschool education, research, puppets, puppet production