Browsing by Author "Salo, Lyydia"

Objective The goal for my thesis was to examine what views six children who I interviewed have on girl’s and boy’s own and shared plays, interests, hobbies and colours. There are more studies that have concentrated how gender shows in children’s everyday life by interviewing educators for example. That’s why I wanted to interview children themselves. The objective was to examine children’s own views and what they tell from their own experience to get closer to children’s world. Methods For my thesis I interviewed six 6–7 year old preschooler which of whom three were girls and three were boys. In their preschool, they executed Freinet’s pedagogic in applied way. The children were familiar to me from my second years Kindergarten teacher’s practicum. The interviews were semi-structured theme interviews, which I recorded, transcribed and analyzed as qualitative content analysis requires. As I analyzed the answers I also used my knowledge of the customs of the preschool from my practicum. For example how they had arranged free play in that particular preschool. Results and conclusions Girls and boys had different contents in their plays. Girl’s plays were more roleplays and boys built more. Girls and boys think that they can play in other genders groups usually depending on the play. The plays that girls and boys shared were goal-directed plays such as rule plays. Girls are interested in themes concerning human relations when boy’s interests were playing and games. Common interest between boys and girls was playing. However the plays that interested boys and girls were different. The possible hobbies of girls and boys were mainly sporty. Girl’s hobbies were more dances and boys played more ballgames. Never the less the children though that girls and boys can be into same hobbies such as ballgames. The myth about girl’s and boy’s colors still exists but it may have developed. The colors that girls and boys both are interested in were red and blue.