First dance was a motor response to the appearance of certain emotions. The repetition of these movements formed a certain pattern from which the dance arose. Traditional dances, which we also call folk dances, are part of folk customs and rituals, they are the first forms of dances. The people celebrated various holidays and events with dancing. The history of the dance tradition in the world goes back a long way, even in cave times before the development of cave painting and first developed in the culture of Africa, Asia and in Egypt. Dance traditions in Croatia are developing under numerous influences, for some dances it is very difficult to determine under whose influence they arose, this is supported by the lack of documents on the origin of the first dances in the area of today's Croatia. Ethnochoreologist dr. Ivan Ivančan has been researching our region for many years and he found several dance areas in most often the same or similar elements, while in the adjacent area they are absent or occur very rarely. Even with small territorial area, Croatia can boast of the richness and diversity of its heritage culture. Ivančan divided the territory of Croatia into four dance zones: Alpine, Pannonian, Adriatic, Dinaric. Goran Knežević wrote down the components that make up the structure of folk dance. Children have always been active participants in dance, as well as guardians of tradition, children's traditional creativity has great values. By learning traditional dances, we develop in children their personal and national identity , but we also instill a sense of pride in our rich traditional culture. Through traditional dances we awaken patriotism in children.The richness of folklore, in addition to dances, is made up of counters, songs, moving games and folk costumes. Through the research conducted in this paper, we can conclude that educators are aware of the importance of folklore and tradition and that already in preschool children should be introduced to the same.