The objective of this study is to examine the influence of the forest experience activity on the child's language expression and nature-friendly attitude by designing and applying the forest experience activity that children can feel the forest and ca...
The objective of this study is to examine the influence of the forest experience activity on the child's language expression and nature-friendly attitude by designing and applying the forest experience activity that children can feel the forest and can facilitate various interactions.
The problems of the study specified by the objective of the study are followed.
1. How does the forest experience activity affect the child's language expression?
2. How does the forest experience activity affect the child's nature-friendly attitude?
For this study, there were total 56 children aged 5 in two private kindergartens located in Nowon-gu Seoul. As an experimental group, 28 children aged 5 in 'S' Kindergarten were selected. As a comparative group, 28 children aged 5 in 'K' Kindergarten were selected.
To test the child's language expression, the tool made by Lee Ji-Yeon (1999) was used. To measure the expressive word, the words were classified by using the classification of parts of speech of the school grammar education(1991), and a viewpoint of word of Choi, Hyeon-Bae(Nam, Ki-Sim, Go, Yeong-Geun, 1994), A length of sentence was measured by MLU(Mean Length of Utterances in Monpheme) method of Brown(1973). To test the nature-friendly attitude, 11 questions for measuring 'the nature-friendly attitude' among 'the environment-friendly attitude test' made by Musser & Diamond (1999) and changed by Huh, Yun-Jeong (2001) were used.
This study was progressed in order of preliminary experiment, pre-test, experimental treatment and post test. For the experimental group, the forest experience activity was conducted for 50∼60 minutes total 18 times (Twice per week) for total 9 weeks from October 24, 2007 to December 21, 2007. For the comparative group, daily life topics-centric educational activity by the kindergarten curriculum was conducted.
In order to verify the problems of the study, the mean and the standard deviation was calculated for the effect score between the pre-test and the post-test by using the SPSS Program, and then the ANCOVA was conducted.
The results of the study are summarized as follows.
First, the experimental group who experienced the forest experience activity showed significantly-higher language expression score than the comparative group. There is the positive effect even in the number of expressive words such as an adjective, an adverb and a pre-noun, the number of sentences, and the length of sentence.
Second, the forest experience activity showed the significant differences in the nature-friendly attitude of the experimental group and the comparative group. It means that this activity has the positive effect on the nature-friendly attitude.