In today’s world of urbanization and fast-paced life, adults face strong social pressure to devote a large amount of time to the material provision of the family. Families need help and support in raising and educating their children, which they receive from institutional forms of upbringing and education—in this case, kindergarten. Kindergarten can be understood as a “service” provided to families, which involves taking care of their children for a certain period during the day. Thus, kindergarten is often seen from the perspective of a daycare—a place where the child is cared for, spends time waiting for someone to pick them up, and then continues life after leaving the kindergarten. Of course, the role of kindergarten in providing safety and security to children is indisputable — but is that the only purpose of attending kindergarten? Certainly not.

Kindergarten is a place of shared living for children and adults, a place where different personalities intertwine, strong emotional bonds are formed, and learning and development happen. Children and adults do not leave their previous experiences, behaviors, moods, needs, desires, interests, and similar things at the kindergarten door. As social beings who have a constant need for interaction and communication with others, they bring to kindergarten everything that makes them unique human beings and develop through connecting with others. Such uniqueness, but also diversity compared to others, is continuously nurtured and developed in kindergarten through relationships between children and adults, based on mutual respect, trust, listening, and understanding.

It is important that the child is not seen as a passive recipient of ready-made knowledge, but rather as an active participant in their own development and learning. To understand themselves and the world around them, children interpret new situations through what has already happened, thereby building on existing knowledge and developing dispositions for learning within themselves. Children are active participants in everything that happens in kindergarten—they discover, search, explore, shape, decide, question—in other words, they live.

Kindergarten is a place where the child develops and learns, a place where the child strives to understand themselves and the world around them. Kindergarten is a place where the child spends quality time, a place where the child is happy and content with themselves. Kindergarten is not just a daycare, a playroom, or a place where children “just play.” Kindergarten is not preparation for school. Kindergarten is not a joke!