Using the Animal World in Teaching Creative Activities to Preschool Children - A Bionics-Based Educational Approach
Annotatsiya
Creative activity constitutes a foundational dimension of early childhood education, underpinning cognitive flexibility, symbolic thinking, and socio-emotional development in young learners. The natural world — and the animal kingdom in particular — offers a uniquely rich, universally accessible source of inspiration for fostering creativity in preschool settings. Drawing on cross-disciplinary evidence from educational psychology, early childhood pedagogy, and bionics, this review examines the theoretical foundations and practical applications of animal-inspired, bionics-based approaches to creative education for children aged three to six years. The central argument advanced is that systematic integration of animal forms, behaviors, and biological principles into preschool art, movement, storytelling, and project-based learning activities yields measurable gains in imaginative capacity, ecological literacy, and intrinsic motivation for learning. The review further identifies the psychological mechanisms through which nature-based stimuli engage children's curiosity and aesthetic sensibilities, and critically evaluates the methodological challenges facing researchers and practitioners who seek to implement bionics-grounded curricula in diverse early childhood settings. Implications for curriculum design, teacher training, and future empirical research are discussed.