Krzysztof Kraszewski

The folk toys in the general technical education of
children
1. Introduction
According to W. Dzieniarz „the purpose of technical education is to enhance children’s
knowledge through the study of basic technological problems and, as a consequence,
familiarise them with technological language (names of tools, process technologies), stimulate
and develop their interest in technological issues, foster an active and thus cognitive and
creative attitude towards technology, and stimulate construction-oriented activities” 1.
According to M. Parnowska-Kwiatkowska2, one of the main tasks of art and technology
classes is to teach children to be artistically creative based on their observations of reality and
their experiences and involvement with their surrounding environment. The author also
believes it is important to teach children simple technical skills, make them more sensitive to
the beauty of their environment and introduce them to indigenous, folk art. Further, she
emphasizes the need “to develop such intellectual skills as perceptiveness, the ability to think
independently and critically, imaginativeness, resourcefulness, and the ability to distinguish
between colours, shapes, weight, etc, and the properties of different objects, materials and
work tools.” 3 In turn, K. Zajda and S. Lipina attach great weight to construction-technical
tasks in the preliminary technical education of pre-school age children. According to them,
such tasks are designed to stimulate the psycho-motor activity of pupils in directions
anticipated and determined by their teachers. In the authors’ opinion, performing such tasks
helps children assimilate both technological information and technological products that are
useful to us in our daily lives. It also helps foster technological and constructive ways of
thinking, and acquire knowledge about technical production processes4.
An analysis of the objectives and premises of pre-school technical education shows that
the main goals of lessons at this stage of a child’s development include: familiarising him or
her with the simplest materials and tools, anticipating possible dangers posed by toys during
the final manufacturing process, acquainting him or her with simple technical objects from the
immediate environment, nurturing cognitive capabilities, and developing information
gathering, communication and work-planning skills. During games and lessons geared
towards discovery, research, experimentation5, and construction-based activities, children
develop creative attitudes and derive satisfaction and joy from their own activities.
2. Regionalism – regional toys and technology
Nowadays, more and more importance in teaching-didactic work is being attached to
linking different areas of teaching with national and regional traditions, including folk culture
and art. This problem has assumed particular significance in the context of ongoing European
integration. It is thus important that such integration help expand and deepen the knowledge
and skills of children as well as increase their sense of pride in their national and cultural
heritage. As a consequence, general-technical education may also play a significant role in
familiarising pupils with the material culture of their society, as well as its customs and
traditions. Such an approach, however, requires the skilful inclusion of these problems within
complex themes so that programme content in this field is not taught in an isolated and
artificial manner, but rather represents an integral element in the new conception of education.
It is precisely for this reason, as Z. Piwońska observes, that stress is already being placed in
primary schools, and sometimes in kindergartens, too, on acquainting pupils with their
cultural heritage, nurturing respect for tradition and preparing them for creative, conscious
participation in cultural and social life6. For the basic purpose of regional education is to
make pupils aware of their own identity as a basis for playing an active role in their
environment and being genuinely open to other societies and cultures7. Kindergartens should
help cultivate traditions, stimulate interest in the past, and provide children with facts about
those traditions, while at the same time taking into account each child’s level of thinking and
using activating learning methods which involve all of a child’s senses and emotions8.
One area regarded as having enormous potential in this context is the use of folk toys
during games and lessons. For, as T. Lewińska observes, the toy is a medium through which
behavioural patterns are distributed and attitudes formed. Toys enable children to know what
is close to them, what is “ours”, and also teaches them roles they will perform in the future. It
is worth stressing as the author does that games and toys make it possible to convey cultural
traditions, religious practices and rituals and customs and satisfy basic psycho-physical needs.
As authentic sources of culture games and are an inseparable element in the development of
man and every civilisation9. Indeed, R. Zięzio argues that it is the toy that “creates” the user,
since it is the toy that “determines” the game10.
The literature on the subject refers to four basic kinds of folk toy in Poland. These are:
locomotive toys (hobby horses, horse and carriages, wheelbarrows, gopads, crutches, rolling
wheels, etc.); building toys (building blocks, jigsaw puzzles, building sets, models, cut outs,
etc.); sound-making toys (pipes, flutes, whistles, rattles etc.); anthropomorphic and
zoomorphic toys (dolls, puppets, dwarfs, teddy bears, baby rabbits, puppies, kittens etc..)11.
These toys also include mixed forms which feature combinations of the above-mentioned
basic types.
My research shows that teachers are also aware of the educational and learning value
of folk toys in the very first classes at school. They often remember these toys from their own
childhoods,. They have observed that children today are also happy to play with such toys as:
baby strollers, building bricks, cradles, sleigh horses, whistles, popguns, rattles, regional
dolls, egg-shell puppets, straw chains, wooden wheelbarrows, horses with chaise, willow
flutes, clay birds, scooters, paper tissue cut outs, cloth balls, sawdust-stuffed balls, rag dolls,
toy windmills, toy guns – pop-guns, wooden toy cars.
Teachers believe that these toys have many attributes, including the fact that:
- They are made from natural elements,
- They teach pupils how to relate to nature,
- They allow pupils to learn about the traditions of a given region,
- They enhance the imagination,
- They do not give rise to aggression,
- They encourage identity with a specific group, region,
- They are environmentally-friendly,
- They enable children to learn new art techniques and construction solutions,
- They familiarise children with certain occupations practiced by people in a given area12.
In their games and lessons children acquire basic knowledge and technical skills.
Among other things they can become aware of different spatial relations and learn the names
and perceive the functions of the different components of a given toy, as well as observe the
arrangement and interaction of those elements. It is also important for children to know the
names and properties of the materials from which a given toy is made.
R. Zięzio argues that anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, construction and sound-emitting
toys allow children to eliminate from the world of illusion facts that refer to reality. By way of
example he describes a zoomorphic toy (a duck or butterfly) on wheels which when the child
moves it by pulling a string the wings emit a sound (of beating together). „Functionally,
therefore, such a toy is construction-oriented, zoomorphic and sound-emitting, it introduces
the child that plays with it to the world of simple transmissions, to the world of animals and
colour juxtapositions characteristic of different regions”13. On the other hand, toys
characterized by constant repetition„ e.g. a rotating movement, a movement along a simple
line, together with natural sounds and locomotion, are easily accepted by children and allow
them to derive more pleasure from performing different manual operations”. They can also,
the author argues, serve as models for technical and art activities.
When considering the role of toys in the technical education of the pre-school age
child attention should be paid above all to selecting the right toys and taking into account the
child’s level of development. The important role played by toys in developing children’s
interest in technology and the methodological premises resulting from this problem have been
considered by (among others) K. Zajda i S. Lipina. They identify various kinds of toys that
influence manual dexterity, help children assimilate technical vocabulary, and enrich their
knowledge of technology and technical appliances. The authors argues that younger children
of pre-school age manifest a greater need for movement and action. For this very reason
„particular interest is aroused by those objects and phenomena which are in motion, which
serve some purpose, and where something happens to them. The displacement of objects in
movement is easily perceivable, hence the names of these objects, as well as their states and
relationship with the surrounding environment are more easily assimilated by children. On the
other hand, they are less interested in the mechanism itself, for examining causes and effects
is not a factor in this stage of their concrete-imagination thinking.[..] The scope of older
children’s interest, on the other hand, is much greater. Their perceptions are richer, they look
for causes behind the facts and phenomena they observe, and exhibit a greater curiosity and
desire to know their immediate and more distant environments”14.
Alongside cognitive values, another area of extreme importance is the practical activity of a
child, especially in the context of locomotor functions. By reaching for an object a child
shows that he or she is aware of the motor value of movement. One important component of
practical activity is movement and the child gains exercise by adjusting the movement of a
hand or leg to adapt to a situation15.
3. Final remarks
A correlated approach to achieving the objectives of general technical and regional
education will help develop children’s predispositions and aptitudes and foster active and
creative attitudes. These subjects offer great potential in terms of supporting the multi-faceted
development of children, thereby making them an attributive component of general education.
The assumptions behind them provide for differentiation both in teaching content and didactic
tasks, which may constitute the basis of a child’s creative work according to his or her
interests and psycho-physical and intellectual capabilities. In the opinion of B. GrzeszczukNędza, planned and systematic didactic and teaching work in this field helps promote:
- inter-personal communications skills,
- inter-personal skills of co-existence and co-operation,
-
skills in using direct and indirect methods of cognising reality,
skills in discerning, describing and explaining relations between natural components of
the natural environment and human life and activity,
- skills in perceiving works of art and the future creator,
- skills in making use of creations of technology and the future inventor16.
According to B. Muchacka, a child who lives in a society based on a technological civilization
has many opportunities to satisfy his or her natural cognitive needs and the task of the preschool teacher is foster the child’s desire to know about things. For this desire is the source of
intellectual curiosity later in life17.
By way of conclusion, when we consider the issue at stake in this article we ought to
stress the words of R. Zięzio, namely that toys are bound up with our first reflexions on life
and also nurture individual sensibility. For cultural differentiation is based on developing the
right esthetic and cognitive attitudes. „Childhood games, pastimes and toys determine our
view of things later on in the adult world.”18.
1
W. Dzieniarz, Z Zagadnień wychowania technicznego w przedszkolu. Przewodnik
metodyczny dla nauczycieli przedszkoli i klas zerowych w szkole, Częstochowa 1993, p.11.
2
M. Parnowska-Kwiatkowska,
Warszawa 1959, p.69.
Zajęcia
artystyczno-techniczne
w
przedszkolu,
3
Ibid
4
K. Zajda, S. Lipina, Wychowanie techniczne w przedszkolu, Warszawa 1984, p.46.
5
See: Lehrplan der Volksschule. Wien 1989.
6
Z. Piwońska p.45
7
O edukacji regionalnej – dziedzictwie kulturowym w regionie. Biblioteczka Reformy.
MEN, Warszawa 2000, p.17.
8
J. Grabula-Orzechowska, Czy przedszkole sprzyja kultywowaniu tradycji? (in:)
„Wychowanie w Przedszkolu” 1996, No.8, pp.455-456.
9
T. Lewińska, Ogólnopolskie Forum Zabawkarskie i konkurs na zabawkę ludową. (in:)
„Wychowanie w Przedszkolu” 1995, No. 10, p.625.
10
R. Zięzio, Zabawka we współczesnym świecie permanentnej edukacji kulturalnej. (in:)
„Zabawy i Zabawki” 1999, Nos. 1-4, p.37.
11
B. Kopczyńska-Jaworowska, M. Niewiadomska-Rudnicka, Piękno uŜyteczne czy
piękno ginące, Łódź 1997, p.145.
12
K. Kraszewski, ZałoŜenia edukacji regionalnej w opiniach nauczycieli klas I-III, (in:)
K. Kraszewski (red.), Elementy techniki i sztuki w edukacji regionalnej dzieci w wieku
przedszkolnym i wczesnoszkolnym, Rzeszów – Kraków 2001, pp.43–44.
13
R. Zięzio, op.cit. p.39.
14
K. Zajda, S. Lipina, Wychowanie techniczne w przedszkolu, Warszawa 1984, pp.103
and 106.
15
T. Nowacki, Podstawy dydaktyki zawodowej, Warszawa 1979, p.185.
16
B. Grzeszczuk-Nędza, Program edukacji regionalnej „Krakowiaczek”. Nauczanie
początkowe klasy I-III, (in:) K. Kraszewski (red.) Elementy techniki i sztuki w edukacji
regionalnej dzieci w wieku przedszkolnym i wczesnoszkolnym, Rzeszów – Kraków 2001,
p.103.
17
B. Muchacka, Zabawy badawcze w edukacji przedszkolnej, Kraków 1999.
18
R. Zięzio, op. cit. pp.38-39.