Patriotic education of younger schoolchildren through the «Young рatriots» program

Abstract

The urgency of the problem of patriotic education of younger schoolchildren is due to the pedagogical need for children of this age group to form initial ideas about the Motherland, its historical past and cultural heritage. This process includes the development of an emotional and value-based attitude towards one's country, which acts as a foundation for the subsequent development of citizenship and patriotism in subsequent age periods. At primary school age, basic cognitive and emotional structures are laid that determine further perception and attitude to the socio-cultural environment, which makes this period sensitive for the formation of the foundations of national identity and citizenship. Ignoring or underestimating the importance of patriotic education in early school age can lead to deformations in the formation of a personality's value system and complicate the process of socialization in the future. Extracurricular activities are the most optimal space for the development and education of patriotic qualities. After analyzing the theoretical foundations of our research, we were able to establish that extracurricular activities are the most appropriate, optimal and effective option for implementing various types of work on the implementation of patriotic education of younger schoolchildren due to their unique structure. Extracurricular activities provide a huge variety of opportunities to use various interesting forms of classes, during which children are taught knowledge about their homeland, its history, traditions, cultural features of the peoples inhabiting the country, love and respect for Russia, for fellow citizens, for loved ones, and for nature. In this article, we consider experimental work on the patriotic education of younger schoolchildren in the process of extracurricular activities, which we implemented in the course of a holistic study. Based on the generalized pedagogical experience and the analysis of methodological materials, we have compiled the pedagogical program «Young рatriots», aimed at the patriotic education of younger schoolchildren in extracurricular activities, which was tested at the formative stage of the study.