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Background. Today’s common typologies and categories of children’s toys are mainly decided by the manufacturers and retailers of children’s products. Such categorizations are not based on a theoretical understanding of child development and therefore cannot provide information about the opportunities that toys provide for the young.

Objective. This study proposed three criteria for categorizing toys based on the cultural-historical approach: their degree of realism; their degree of anthropomorphism; and their degree of detail. These criteria were chosen as a result of an analysis of theoretical works carried out in the framework of cultural-historical approach.

Design. The proposed criteria were tested through an experiment measuring children’s toy preferences. The participants were 129 children of ages 3-4 years. Experimental data confirmed that most children do prefer realistic and detailed toys rather than those with fewer of these properties. The contribution of socio-demographic factors and the children’s individual developmental indicators to their toy preference was also analyzed.

Results. The study revealed that among various socio-demographic factors, only the child’s gender and the number of siblings in the family acted as significant predictors for the toy preferences. None of child’s developmental characteristics (non-verbal intelligence, executive functions, and emotional understanding) were found to be significant predictors of preference for particular toys.

Conclusions. The assumption that toys can be assessed in terms of their realism and degree of detail found empirical support. The results of this study may be useful in designing further research and in the practical issue of toy selection for children age 3-4 years.

The relevance of the topic of the article. Over the past 10 years, the level of development of the play of modern preschoolers continues to remain low. The researchers note the existence of different interpretations of the concept of “play“, which complicates the formation of a dialogue and provokes a gap between the declared value of the play and real practice. However, one of the possible reasons for the low level of development of the play in studies from different countries may also be the limitations of existing methods of studying the play. To conduct research on the conditions of the development of the play and its influence on children’s development, a special role is played by the selection of diagnostic techniques that should make it possible to see play in development.

The aim of the study: to analyze the advantages and limitations of existing diagnostic methods for children’s play.

Description of the research progress. In total, 18 methods were selected, the analysis included a comparison of different tools in terms of the possibility of assessing the development of play according to the following parameters: the method of studying the play, the features of the procedure and conditions of observation, the role of the observer, the evaluated aspects of children’s play.

Research results. A number of techniques have been identified that are most suitable for a comprehensive assessment of play, including for evaluating a developed play. The key deficiencies of existing methods were also identified: the contradiction of the evaluation procedure to the features of spontaneous play, the lack of an integrated approach to the study and focus on the affective side of the play, identifying only the current level of development of the play without taking into account its potential capabilities. The development of tools that allow us to see the play in development is a challenge for modern researchers.

Relevance (context) of the subject of the article. The problem of creative abilities is becoming increasingly important in two contexts at once – both in the context of human self-realization, and in the context of the development of practices and production. A special place is occupied by the development of creative abilities in preschool age: even in the works of Lev Vygotsky, it was said about the importance of considering the germs of creativity in the game and fantasy of children. Today, within the framework of the cultural-historical approach, there are a number of scientific schools that study the possibilities of diagnosing and developing children’s creativity.

The aim of the study is to analyze the approaches to the study of children’s creativity in cultural-historical psychology in order to understand what answers to the questions posed by Lev Vygotsky, were discovered over the past decades, and what remained unanswered. It is also important to see how the questions themselves were transformed, since the raising of a new question is a sign of the development of science. The correlation of existing approaches is important for the development of new research programs in the logic of cultural-historical psychology.

Description of the research. The article analyzes various approaches to the research and development of creative abilities: V.V. Davydov and V.T. Kudryavtsev, D.B. Bogoyavlenskaya, N.E. Veraksa and O.M. Dyachenko, V.N. Druzhinin, L.F. Obukhova. The general and specific characteristics of the interpretation of children’s creativity in different approaches of the cultural and historical tradition are highlighted. The conducted research correlates with the questions about the creative nature of the human psyche and about children’s creativity, posed by L.S.Vygotsky.

Research results. The article concludes that despite all the differences in the approaches that have appeared in the logic of the cultural-historical tradition, they are united by the idea of the resourcefulness of preschool childhood and the importance of educational efforts aimed at maintaining the “sprouts of creativity”. In Russian studies, the question is raised about the means of creative abilities that allow us transforming the present situation (dialectical structures and symbols), as well as about the affective-volitional component of the creative process – the ability to detect a task. All this distinguishes the concepts that were born within the framework of the cultural-historical approach from the theory of creativity by J. Guilford and E. Torrance. At the same time, it is indicated that children’s activities (playing, storytelling, experimentation, etc.) are still rarely considered in research as a context for the manifestation of creative abilities.

Conclusion. The article concludes that it is important to conduct new research, both ascertaining and longitudinal, which will allow us to take the next steps in understanding how the means of developing creative abilities are mastered in children’s activities and how this affects the formation of creative abilities in subsequent ages.