The importance of the natural environment and the kindergarten playground for the pre-school children's activity

摘要

The primary purpose of this study is to determine the importance and the need for the inclusion of the natural environment in the educational system.udThe theoretical part has first been divided into areas relevant to the topic and then thoroughly researched. The introduction offers a description of the basic Slovenian National Curriculum for Pre-School Institutions which includes the guidelines, principles and aims of education. Among those, the definition of nature, movement and play can also be found. Next, the focus shifts to the main idea of the thesis – nature. By studying different authors, I explained the importance of nature for a child's development as well as the development of appropriate relationship with it. The last part of the theoretical analysis briefly deals with the movement and play.udThe main objective of the empirical part was to depict the differences in activities in the learning forest with those in the kindergarten playground. I was mainly interested in finding gender-based differences in movement activities. All the data was collected with the help of the Garmin tool and through observation. When analyzed, it showed the forest activities children indulge in differ greatly from the ones available on the kindergarten playground. A forest as an environment with countless natural materials encourages significantly more diverse play stimulation. Furthermore, the length of the path the children of both genders conducted in the same time interval was on average much longer in the forest than on the playground. It should be noted; however, boys did move more in the natural environment than on the playground. Overall, the kindergarten playground did not seem to encourage many differences in genders.ud