Abstract:

Today’s children are surrounded by advertisements anywhere. They can see an advertisement in shops, on TV and on the Internet. As advertisements are supposed to affect the human senses and to draw the attention to the product, children are at a disadvantage. They are often not able yet to distinguish the reality from the fiction, which is often depicted there. Thanks to technologies, film tricks in advertising are at such a high level so that even adults sometimes fail to recognize the fact. That’s the reason, because of influence and further recognition between reality and fiction, why children shall be educated better and their media competences shall increase. In the article, there is investigated the position of guidelines given by the Ministry of Education, meaning the framework educational plan for kindergartens. In the Czech Republic, it has been a mandatory part since 2007. The aim of the research was that the children would take several activities, which are supposed to develop their media competences. Afterwards, there was a verification, whether they understood the communicated content, i.e. whether they were able to distinguish the reality from the fiction, depicted in the ads. As far as they are able to distinguish them, they are more resistant to advertising effects. We are obviously aware of the fact that advertisements include other parts, which may influence a customer. Therefor there were formed three activities: “Ad”, the game “Brands and Logos” and the work with the text “Fairy-tale”. For testing the children, they watched the preselected advertisements and subsequently, they responded the questions regarding the displayed content. Based on the obtained results, children from the sample were from more than half cases able to recognize that it was not real. In some cases, the children were even able to give an explanation where the fictional thing in the ad comes from. The tested sample is a smaller one, but the suggested activities were verified by the piloting and it would be suitable to apply these parts to a larger sample. The main goal would not be just the testing, but also to spread the awareness of media competences of preschool children.

Keywords:

Media Competences, advertisement, kindergarten.