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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.

There is Vygotsky and Vygotsky. The Vygotsky who is still alive in his works and their thoughtful readers, and the Vygotsky «from textbooks». This is what Vygotsky looks like «in textbooks» schematically. According to his conception, a child does not develop on his own; he draws his «powers» for development from the sociocultural environment, which is created for him by an adult. To be more precise, it is created by his hands, his mind and, if he is lucky, by his heart. That is why when doing it, an adult acts not «on his own behalf» but «on his behalf and the behalf of the authority» of culture itself, which formed historically when he merely acts as an intermedium between culture and the child. In collaboration with an adult, a child learns cultural patterns – ways of interacting with human things, models of human behavior, samples of world perception, and criteria for evaluating what is happening in the world, deciphering «languages» – the symbols of the culture... And then he applies these patterns and codes to certain situations. It seems reasonable. But the social factors of child development (which included communications with an adult) were written about long before Vygotsky. Usually they were described as something imposed externally, something directive. From this perspective, development appeared to be a gradual «social enslavement», and they searched for the sources of freedom in the primal game of Mother Nature’s forces, which is natural for such logic. However, this «mother» is in some ways is a more rigid «dictator» than society. In fact, Vygotsky’s ideas are much deeper and more interesting.

Relevance. Observing the modern processes taking place in the educational society, it is impossible not to note the marked generation gap and, as a result, the depreciation of cultural ideals and values among young people and the younger generation. The article presents the experience of testing the pedagogical technology “Artifact”, based on the key ideas of the cultural and historical approach and designed to make cultural artifacts the semantic and value core of the educational process of a preschool educational organization.

Progress of the study. The study involved 147 preschoolers aged 4 to 7 years attending preschool educational organizations in Moscow and the Voronezh Region. The study was supposed to design a complex of psychological and pedagogical conditions for the development of a cultural sample by a child through the acquaintance of preschoolers with a cultural artifact, the restoration of cultural meanings and contexts, and to obtain products of children’s creativity (children’s artifacts) created on its basis.

The results of the study. In each age group participating in the study, the original cultural artifacts were identified and based on them, various children’s artifacts with partial or complete reproduction of mastered cultural samples were obtained using the Artifact technology.

Conclusions. A cultural artifact, as an entry point into culture under specially designed psychological and pedagogical conditions, is an object of cognition appropriate to preschool childhood and a source of a cultural sample offered to a child for development in the zone of proximal development. Being a part or the basis of a children’s creative product (children’s artifact), a cultural sample becomes a particle of the culture of the future and an important condition for the formation of a conscious and value-based attitude of the younger generation to cultural heritage. Thus, the Artifact technology has been successfully tested in the conditions of real pedagogical processes in kindergartens and can be recommended for solving problems related to the implementation of a value-oriented component of educational programs and the assignment of traditional Russian values by preschoolers.