“Play with Fori” an innovative educational program for social-emotional skills development in Bulgarian preschool education

Relevance. This report presents "Play with Fori" an innovative educational program that develops emotional literacy in preschool children and their socio-emotional competence. "Play with Fori" has a clearly defined educational structure and a minimum of activities and competencies that are expected to be acquired by preschool children. The program lasts 10 weeks, with one module presented each week. The first module begin with the story and situation in which the main character Fori the hedgehog finds himself, the emotion he feels and the related facial expression, as well as his attempts to deal with the situation. Half of the content of the educational program is digitalized and as a result was developed a mobile application that can be used in family setting or in individual work.

Purpose of the study. The study has several objectives - to examine the level of emotional literacy in four different age groups, to examine the effectiveness of the educational program "Play with Fori", by comparing the results before and after the end of the educational program.

Research methods and sample. Pre- and post-assessment of the emotional vocabulary of children using a special picture test. SPSS is used for statistical analysis of data. Teachers record changes in children's behaviour after each educational module in the teacher's diary. The sample includes 154 children, from 3 to 7 years old, from four preschool groups.

Main results. "Play with Fori" not only improves children's vocabulary in terms of emotions, but also helps children manage various difficult emotional states and behaviours.

Conclusion. Teachers report improvement in language skills in relation to emotions, which corresponds to the data from the pilot study, as well as a reduced rate of aggressive behaviour and improved social skills of children.