Abstract
As the population of preschooler increases with the increment of employed women today, the physical environment of day-care center is becoming an important factor for the preschooler as well as home environment. In order to create a suitable and desirable day-care environment for preschoolers, the using behavior of the preschoolers, who are the main users, needs to be applied to the spacial design. In this research, play preference area of Korea and United States which have different physical environments are analyzed. Child behavior observation analysis technique, interview with the teacher in charge, floor plan and furniture arrangement plan of the day-care centers and photography were performed for this research. The subjects were 63 preschoolers of 50 months old who are using Korean and American day-care centers and play of five minutes per preschooler was filmed for 3 days. Total 01 189 motion pictures were analyzed for this research. As a result, the physical environment, programs, preference area and finally the similarity and difference according to the gender were clarified for each countries' day-care center. The Korean preschoolers preferred the block area most, the second most favorite area being art for the younger class and language for older class. According to the gender, girls preferred language area while boys chose block area. On the other hand in American preschoolers' case, due to the large variety of play area, the play preference was distributed among various area except several high preference area. Based on this research, when designing indoor play area of day care centers, the area of block, language, and art which are popular play preferences should be considered firsthand, and gender preference is also needed to be thought of. These results may be used as an important data for planning the day care center play area in the future.
