Children’s Play The Ecological Story in Function of Ecological Education of Preschool Children

Abstract Today, the importance of ecological education is often highlighted, although the current National Curriculum for Early and Preschool Education doesn’t even mention it. Although ecological education is not mentioned in this baseline document, various activities in this direction are often carried out in our kindergartens. An example of this is the play The Ecological Story by the author Sanja Seferović-Bosak from her collection of plays Maštarije: Igrokazi za djecu od 3 do 13 godina (eng. Pipe Dreams: Plays for Children of 3-13 years). This paper describes the preparation and performance of this play in 2017 in the kindergarten Radost (eng. Joy) in Novska. The theoretical part of the paper considers the basic settings of ecological education in early and preschool age, with special reference to current practice in Croatian kindergartens. The empirical part of the paper describes the stages of preparation and performance of the play The Ecological Story, with special reference to the compliance of this project with the requirements of the National Curriculum in terms of developing key competences for lifelong learning. The paper also contains an analysis of methodological procedures with particular reference to the preparation of musical numbers in the play.