Forest Activities for Developing Emotional Vocabulary and Lowering Cortisol Levels in Kindergarteners

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of forest activities on the cortisol concentrations in the body and emotional vocabulary of kindergarteners. The participants were 36 kindergarten children aged 4-5, 17 in the control group and 19 in the experimental group. Forest activities consisted of six steps according to the level of kindergarteners, and the program was carried out at G City Environment Training Institute. Before and after the experiment, the children's emotional vocabulary was self-reported and salivary cortisol was analyzed to evaluate changes in the body's stress hormones. As a result, in the control group, positive words increased significantly from 0.14 to 1.53 (p=.003), but the decrease in negative words was not significant (p=.059). In the experimental group, positive words increased significantly from 0.47 to 2.84 after forest activities (p=.000). Negative words decreased significantly from 1.94 to 0.00 after forest activities (p=.000). In the analysis of salivary cortisol, the change in salivary cortisol concentrations was not significant (p=.667) in the control group, merely decreasing from 0.179 ㎍/dl to 0.161 ㎍/dl. However, the experimental group showed a significant decrease from 0.202 ㎍/dl to 0.161 ㎍/dl after forest activities (p=.049). These results suggest that forest play activities may be helpful in encouraging young children's emotional development by increasing positive vocabulary and decreasing negative vocabulary and reducing stress in kindergarteners.