Education of preschool children, distance learning, online teaching in pre-primary education

The epidemic measures related to Covid-19 have caused many changes in the field of education. One of the key changes is a transition of a form of teaching from full-time to distance learning, which is currently underway in the Czech and Slovak Republics in the lowest level of education - kindergartens. The education of preschool children, especially pre-schoolers, is a challenge for both kindergarten teachers and parents, without whom it would not be possible. In the Czech Republic and Slovakia, kindergartens were closed at the beginning of 2021 due to the deteriorating pandemic situation. Although some kindergartens had already tried distance learning at time when they were closed locally due to quarantine. Their little experience with the distance learning is being only now fully manifested. As part of quantitative research kindergarten teachers were addressed in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The questionnaire was used to find out the experience with online teaching, motivation of children and their parents, experience with the use of digital technologies, possibilities of teaching methods in the online environment, as well as experience with digital literacy of children, parents and teachers in the context of online pre-primary education. At the same time, methodological topics have been developed from the field of developing mathematical ideas of children, which teachers can use in an online teaching in a pre-primary education and could apply them on the interactive whiteboard even after the transition to full-time education. Results were primarily used in the modification of materials for the distance teaching of mathematics in the kindergarten, by identifying critical points of the mathematical content and updating the study content of future kindergarten teachers.