• Korean Journal of Childcare and Education
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• v.9 no.5
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• pp.357-379
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• 2013

The purpose of this study was to have a more perfect understanding of forest kindergartens, to examine educational values important for the actualization of forest kindergarten education and to suggest some of the right directions for forest kindergartens. To serve the purpose, it was necessary to conduct qualitative research to closely observe the experiences of preschoolers in a forest kindergarten and grasp the meaning of their experiences. As a result, it has been found that the world of experiences among the preschoolers in the forest kindergarten consisted of the following three fields: The first was the field of real nature. The preschoolers found their own nature in the forest kindergarten. The second was the field of aesthetics. The preschoolers acquired aesthetic experiences in the forest kindergarten. And the last was the field of genuine play. The findings of the study had the following implications for education: First, it's important to provide enough time to preschoolers. Second, it's important to reconsider the meaning of preschooler's activity spaces. Third, it's important to see the meaning of genuine play and things to play with in a new light. The findings of the study show that a forest kindergarten could serve as a meaningful space to provide happiness for preschoolers.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.40-55
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• 2015

This study aims to evaluate the efficiency of the forest experience center for children led by the local community as experiential management for forest kindergarten education. For this, an importance and performance analysis was conducted on the forest experience center for children in Geumcheon-gu, which, of the 12 forest experience center for kids in Seoul, is the only one led by the local community. The questionnaire sheet for the analysis consisted of a total of 36 questions, 20 about place facility areas and 16 about management program areas(including 6 questions about the management led by the local community). The questionnaire survey was done during the period between January 12th and January 19th, 2015. The participants in the survey consisted of 15 forest education specialists and 50 teachers from 19 kindergartens who participated in the forest experience program. The number of questionnaire sheets collected and used for analysis was 13 copies and 43 copies, respectively. The mean values of importance and performance on the place facility areas were 4.07 and 3.78 for forest education specialists, and 4.16 and 3.84 for kindergarten teachers, respectively. The mean values of importance and performance regarding the management program area were 4.38 and 4.16 for forest education specialists, and 4.40 and 4.00 for kindergarten teachers, respectively. Both groups evaluated the place facility areas lower than the management program areas. They also evaluated performance lower than importance. In place facility area, 'accessibility', 'safety' and 'connectivity to forest trail', 'loose parts' and 'safety facilities' were required to 'keep up the good work', because they showed higher importance and performance in place facility areas. Even though most items of management as led by the local community including 'forest experience activity support' were evaluated as 'important', some, including 'effort for local revitalization', were evaluated as low in performance. However, as they were evaluated as higher in importance, if they pursue 'concentrate here', it is expected that they will be evaluated as higher in performance. In addition, considering that program areas including 'forest education specialist's role' are labeled under the management led by the local community, it reflected a positive evaluation. As a result, management led by the local community is efficient as a management system for the forest experience center for children in an experiential forest kindergarten education. Going forward, if this management system is durable in 'keep up the good work' and 'concentrate here', the forest experience center for children led by the local community will be an alternative for an effective experiential forest kindergarten education.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.25 no.9
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• pp.1323-1328
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• 2016

This study aims to identify the beneficial effects of forest experience on emotional changes in young children who are exposed to smartphones in daily life. This research was conducted on 41 children aged five and six years at a kindergarten in Chungcheongnamdo province. The children participated in a five-month forest experience program, conducted twice a week. Before beginning the study, its purpose and procedure were explained to the children's parents and kindergarten teachers, after which written content was collected. Before and after the five-month experience, questionnaires about smartphone use and emotional conditions were administered through the parents. The participants were divided into two groups, namely average-use and high-use groups, depending on the smartphone addiction proneness score. It was found that negative psychological subscales such as anxiety, impulse, and depression decreased following the five-month forest experience in both groups. Positive psychological attitudes such as sociability and creativity increased significantly after the forest experience. The high-use group showed a wider range of positive changes compared to the average-use group. Accordingly, forest experiences can be used as an effective solution for smartphone addiction problems among young children.

• Journal of People, Plants, and Environment
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.515-524
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• 2019

This study was conducted based on the fact that children in institutions for early childhood education located in cities lack the opportunity to experience nature. Therefore, urban parks are where it is possible to observe nature and natural environment, through which we examined the effects of nature activities on kindergarten children's curiosity and scientific problem-solving ability. The subjects of this study were 5-years old kindergarten children in attending public kindergartens in Cheonan and Asan and 42 children were randomly selected. The pretest and posttest were conducted on curiosity and scientific problem-solving ability before and after nature activities. The results showed that nature activities in urban parks had significant effects on improvement of kindergarten children's curiosity and scientific problem-solving ability (p <.05). Therefore, nature activities in urban parks had positive effects on preference for unknown and exploratory behavior, which are sub-factors of kindergarten children's curiosity. Nature activities also had positive effects on discovery and statement of the problem, creation and application of ideas, and conclusion to problem solving.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.21 no.12
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• pp.494-501
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• 2020

This study is aimed at exploring the effects of forest experience activities on promoting children's community spirit. To achieve this, a pre-post survey was empirically carried out with 40 children at Kindergarten A in the city of Chungnam. The comprehensive findings showed a significant difference between the experimental group, which had forest experience activities, and the control group, which had outdoor activities based on the existing Nuri curriculum. Based on a pre-test for intimacy, emotion, mutual public awareness, and participation consciousness as sub-factors of community spirit, which adopted all the research hypotheses, the results suggest that the forest kindergarten will become an educational place for children. Consequently, personality education using nature in forest kindergartens can become an excellent goal, helping to boost the development of children's sensitivity and emotional stability through awakening the five senses; building up self-awareness, self-reliance, and trust; learning consideration and respect for others; and developing positive attitudes, sociality, potential, imagination, and creativity through forest activities with their peers.

• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.595-605
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• 2017

This study was intended to investigate the effects of after-school forest healing programs on the pro-social behavior and self-efficacy of young children using the attributes of forest and the forest healing factors. The children attending a kindergarten located in ${\bigcirc}{\bigcirc}$ - dong, Cheongju city were divided into a test group which participated in the forest healing program activities and a control group which participated in the regular programs of the kindergarten but not in the forest healing program. Each group consisted of 20 boys and girls aged 3 to 5 years. The forest healing program was conducted once a week from 10 April to 10 July in 2017 for a total of 12 sessions, and each session lasted one hour (60 minutes). The pro-sociality behavior and self-efficacy test of the children was conducted before and after the forest healing program, and the data were analyzed using SPSS 18.0 program. The result showed that the pro-social behaviors that indicated the ability to execute the positive action and the self-efficacy that indicated the self-confidence were statistically significant (p<0.05). The young children who participated in the forest healing program improved their self-esteem through positive thoughts from being with their peer in nature. Moreover, they increased not only ecological knowledge but also consideration for others and cooperative spirit. They also greatly improved the ability to control personal emotion and the ability to form the personal relationship which are the sub-factors of pro-sociality, the ability to adapt to the early childhood education institution, and the physical efficacy which is the sub-factor of self-efficacy. It was concluded that the after-school forest healing program had a positive impact on pro-social behavior and self-efficacy.

• Hwankyungkyoyuk
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.13-26
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• 2010

As an effort to realize the results of last two years of study, this study had three distinguished purposes: 1) confirming whether some requests for corrections had been accepted or not 2) making a list of possible errors found in newly written textbooks and asking to fix them, and 3) classifying forest related contents identified in the textbooks according to the 150 topics included in information material, so called Forest IQ 200. Among 94 errors associated trees, forest or forest education, only thirteen of them were found to be fixed according to the request made in previous study of 2008. Especially, most of the fixed errors were identified to be in natural and social science subject textbooks and nothing was found in art and language areas. Total of 1,320 forest related items were found in the textbooks at the level of kindergarten to 10th grade(freshman in highschool). Korean student was expect to have a chance to learn forest related items 1.64 times a week for 10 years(First to 10th grade). Analyzing 1,109 contents in terms of four topic areas of forest education, the forest culture area was found to have most content of 348 including painting and recreation. Some suggestions were made to make school forest education better, and publishing the forest textbook for elementary schools was one of them.

• Korean Journal of Environment and Ecology
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• v.32 no.5
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• pp.541-552
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• 2018

This study investigated for perception about particulate matter in daily lives of mothers who have children aged from three to five years old and the difference of perception after participating in forest experience programs. The data were compiled from 122 mothers of preschoolers composed by 61 mothers who participated in the forest experience and those who did not. 82.8 percent of 122 mothers were concerned with particulate matters, and 84.4 percent frequently checked information on particulate matters. However, they lacked knowledge, countermeasures, and active practice to reduce it. Awareness of forest and fine particulate matter was high among mothers who had participated in the forest experience, with a high positive perception of forest role and forest environment. Therefore, expanding the opportunity for mothers to actively experience forest will contribute not only the forest experience in infants being activated but also to improve harmful environment such as fine particulate matter.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.3616-3624
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• 2014

The aim of this study was to inquire into the perceptions and the needs of parents on their forest experience activity. To achieve this, a survey was carried out on 250 parents of children in a Gyeonggi-based private kindergarten from December 26 to December 31, 2013. The results are as follows. For the perceptions of parents on the forest experience activity, the 'perception on overall effectiveness' was the highest, followed in order by 'perception on educational effectiveness' and 'general perception'. For the needs of parents on their forest experience activity, 58.2% of them recognized the importance of regular forest experience activity. For the necessity of an annual program, 60.7% of them recognized the necessity of a planned annual program. For the recommendation of forest experience activity, 61.1% of them gave a strong recommendation for forest experience activity. As stated above, most parents positively viewed children's forest experience activity in the environment as it is difficult to approach nature in downtown areas, and children also highly viewed the educational effectiveness of it.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.2486-2494
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• 2015

This study is intended to look into the effects of forest experience activities for developing a moral sense on moral development of children. To achieve this, forest experience activities were performed to 40 5-year-old children from H kindergarten in Chungnam area through April 7 to July 25, 2014. They were classified into an experimental group(9 male children and 11 female children) and a control group(9 male children and 11 female children). Forest experience activities and Nuri curriculum-related forest experience activities were performed to the experimental group and the control group 10 times, respectively. The results were as follows. First, forest activity education had an effect on improving children's moral judgment. Second, moral behaviors showed that the experimental group improved in order, courtesy and moderation, which forest experience activities had a significant effect on improvement in their moral behaviors. As stated above, children's forest activities will valuable education to enhance moral development that identifies the preciousness of life through communion and interaction with nature along with peers, and order, manners and self-control by joint cooperative activities between peers.