Abstract
To date, there is a necessary amount of literature and methodological recommendations on the problems of child safety. This suggests that this area is relevant for modern society, but at the same time there are certain difficulties in solving it. In this regard, the author conducted a bibliometric mapping of the research literature (1990-2025) on safe behavior, playful learning, and preschool education. The purpose of the study: to conduct a systematic mapping of research trends in the field of safe behavior and playful learning in preschool education over the past 35 years using metadata extracted from the Web of Science database. The main bibliometric methods were statistical, counting the number of publications, citation index, and content analysis. Research results: the search covered the period from 1990 to 2025 (May 28, 2025) and was conducted during 3 weeks of June 2025. Initially, during the search, the WoS database provided a total of n = 207,799 publications. Further, the search was filtered by specific indicators, which gave the final set of data for bibliometric analysis n = 3263, which were eventually saved and used in the analysis of this study. The ranking of the frequency of publications and citations of data was performed using the VOSViewer software version 1.6.20. The following categories are analyzed: trends in publication and citation data; major journals and publications; leading authors, organizations, and countries/territories; disciplines underlying research. A detailed report on categories is presented in the study. The practical significance of the study lies in the fact that, based on the content analysis obtained, current trends, scientific directions and research prospects in the field of safe behavior and playful learning in preschool education have been identified.