BROADENING COMPETENCES OF CHILDREN IN PRESCHOOL AGE IN CONSTRUCTIVE PLAY

Abstract

Regulation No. 5 on Preschool Education is one of the main normative documents establishing the state educational standard for preschool education. The educational institutions that ensure the implementation of the standard for preschool education are kindergartens and schools. Schools implement the goals of this standard in the part of compulsory preschool education, when they can provide conditions for this. All institutions in this context must ensure the beginning of the formation of key competences for lifelong learning, according to the European and National Reference Frameworks for Lifelong Learning. The focus for consideration in this article is placed on constructive play as an opportunity to enrich the knowledge, skills and relationships of children in the process of pedagogical interaction in educational areas in kindergarten. Constructive play fulfills one of the goals in the State Educational Standard for Preschool Education by ensuring the satisfaction of the child's need for speech activity, positive emotions and a stimulus for building communication skills. In this way, competences in the field of the Bulgarian language are expanded. In the process of constructive play, children also expand mathematical competence, basic competences in the field of natural sciences and technology: they become acquainted with mathematical concepts, their intellectual development is stimulated by laying the foundations of logical
mathematical thinking. Thus, children gain a real idea of quantitative, spatial and temporal relationships, measurement, geometric figures, become acquainted with different shapes, height, weight, etc. Constructive play enriches children's ideas about all objects from the world around them. In it, children improve their skills to recreate objects from the surrounding reality, their aesthetic feelings and experiences are enriched. This also supports the expansion of social and civic competences, cultural competence and skills for expression through creativity, skills for supporting sustainable development and a healthy lifestyle and sports, learning skills. An essential aspect of using constructive play is its ability to initially develop initiative and entrepreneurship and digital competence, expressed in teamwork skills, planning, forecasting, presentation and implementation of ideas and projects. There are two important conditions for ensuring the developmental effect of constructive play. On the one hand, it is necessary to use all opportunities to expand the perceptions and life experience of children in all forms of pedagogical interaction, especially during walks in nature, excursions, outdoor activities. The second important condition is the provision of a sufficiently diverse set of constructive materials in the classroom, in other rooms of the kindergarten, in the yard and its frequent renewal, not forgetting the possibilities of information technologies for this purpose.