An Analysis of Young Children's Play Behavior by the Characteristics of Environment in the Forest Experience Center for Children

Abstract

The experience and play activities in forest spaces have played an effective role in children's growth and development, therefore, many studies and projects related to forest activity space have progressed actively. However, the focus of previous research has been merely on the effectiveness of forest activity but little on providing the basis for the spatial design of these types of forest activity spaces. Thus, this study aims to identify the relationship between children's developmental play activity and the physical characteristics of forest activity spaces for evidence-based design. First of all, indicators for Cognitive-Social play(CSP) was selected and forest spaces were categorize into play facility spaces and forest spaces. More detailed environmental characteristics of each space were 'play area' and 'paving materials' for play facilities and 'density of tree and shrub', 'slope', 'paving materials' and 'fixing and type of natural loose parts'for forest space. Through environmental inventory and behavior observation, the types of play behaviors and the occurrence frequency of children aged four to five were collected and analyzed.The results were as follows: 1) In play facility spaces, play behaviors occurred at a high frequency at the facility playground with play facilities and sand area. In terms of CSP, functional-solitary and functional-parallel plays occurred predominantly. 2) In forest spaces, various play behaviors occurred at high frequency in the environment with low density planting and various natural loose parts. For CSP, functional-group and symbolic-group plays occurred at a high frequency.3) Symbolic-group play appeared to be highly affected by environmental characteristics like tree area of scatter density or less, 10~20 degree slope, and the presence of fixed large stumps. In conclusion, this study provides standards of physical environmental characteristics for forest activity space design through direct observation and analysis of children's play behaviors.