• Hwankyungkyoyuk
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.27-38
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• 2007

The purpose of this study was to investigate how the future users of a children's garden felt about the designing and operation of the children's garden, which is to be constructed within Korea National Arboretum. For this study, a total of 1,855 elementary school children were selected and then classified by sex and grade. The survey had been carried out to examine the following five items: necessity and advantages of the garden, plants suitable for it, artificial facilities required for it, its space structure, programs necessary for educational activities, and operation programs. The results are as follows: 1. Necessity and advantages of the children's garden: Some 87.7% of respondents said the garden is needed, it would serve for environmental preservation, it would function as a resting place, and it would have educational effect; 2. Plants suitable for it: Uncommon plants which have flowers of several colors; 3. Artificial facilities required for it: Places for experience and rest; 4. Programs necessary for educational activities: maze experiencing and gardening; and 5. Operation programs: Some 86.3% of the respondents said they are needed. They thought educational programs providing the activities of experiencing would be preferable. This study provides basic materials for the planning and designing of the children's garden. When constructing the garden, we should have enough prior discussion for the matters listed above. Furthermore, it is needed to develop several educational programs for efficient operation and management.

• Journal of People, Plants, and Environment
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.385-393
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• 2019

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.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Floral Art and Design
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• no.41
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• pp.13-24
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• 2019

The purpose of this study was to analyze research papers related to forest play of children's and present future research directions and basic data. 174 out of the forest play papers for children's provided to the research information sharing service (www. riss. kr) from 2009 to 2018 were studied. The number of papers according to the study was 114 published for children. Looking at the research method of forest play papers for children, 55.17% for experimental papers, 9.77% for observation papers, 17.82% for research papers, 5.75% for case studies, 6.32% for literature review papers and 5.17% for other papers. Looking at trends by target age, in the case of the papers which studied on the single age, the number of papers researching on age 3.51%) for 2 years old, 2.63% for the 3 years old, 9.65% for the 4 years old, 35.96% for the 5 years old. A total of 40.36% consisted of children aged between 2 and 5 years. A total of 7.89% were published for infants and children with handicapped. The number of theses that studied emotional development accounted for 30.7%, social development was 25.44%, cognitive development was 16.67%, self concept development was 14.04%, physical development was 6.14%, language development was 3.51% and other development was 3.51%. As a result of the above analysis, it was necessary to study the language development and the forest play.

• Journal of People, Plants, and Environment
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.555-564
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• 2020

Background and objective: This study was conducted to investigate the effect of an agro-healing program on the relationship satisfaction and emotional change between parents and children. Methods: We sent an official letter to D Office of Education with information and recruitment for the agro-healing program. Then D Office of Education has sent the official letter to elementary schools under the jurisdiction to recruit parents who were willing to participate in the programs with their children. The subjects were recruited by order of application, and 27 families participated, but 20 parent-child teams who attended all sessions and fully participated in the program were ultimately selected. From October 12 to November 16, 2019, a total of 6 sessions of the programs were held once a week at a care farm in Gyeongsangbuk-do. In the morning, they participated in a program that utilizes the resources of plants and animals in the care farm, and later participated in an indoor horticultural program in the afternoon. Results: In the parent-child relationship satisfaction test, it was found that communication was significantly increased after participating in the agro-healing program (p = .047). There were no statistically significant changes in the sentence completion tests written by the children, but their potential perception or attitude towards their parents changed more positively than before according to the content of the sentences. Conclusion: The agro-healing program could strengthen the relationship between parent and child by improving the parent-child relationship satisfaction and children's emotional attitude towards their parent.

• Journal of People, Plants, and Environment
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.55-65
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• 2020

This study conducted a survey on 163 parents in Korea to investigate their interest in plants, experience in growing plants, and perception on horticultural activity programs (HAP) for their children. Most children (80.4%) of the respondents had experience participating in HAPs, and most of their experience occurred during school hours in preschool educational institutions more than once a month (60.3%). The more interest in plants and experience in growing plants the parents had, the more experience the preschoolers had in participating in HAPs, which implies that the experience of the parents with plants affected their children's participation in HAPs. Parents' most preferred location of HAPs was preschool educational institutions, and most preferred time was school hours with a frequency of more than once a week (57.1%), which is more frequent than the current status of HAPs in preschool educational institutions. Parents also responded that the most preferred instructors of HAP has are those with a professional background in horticulture. Among the activities in HAP for preschoolers, parents most preferred cooking (M = 4.05) activity, and they did not dislike any of the activities. They responded that the facilities for HAP needed to be improved to make HAP more active in preschool educational institutions. Overall, based on the current results, developing suitable HAPs and facilities for preschoolers, fostering professional HAP instructors, and educating parents about horticulture would enhance HAPs in preschool educational institutions, thus providing preschoolers with many benefits of HAPs.

• Journal of People, Plants, and Environment
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.211-220
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• 2020

The purpose of this study was to analyze the frequency and contents of horticultural activities in 696 individual activities listed in 11 teacher's guidebooks of Nuri Curriculum for 5-year-olds, and to find out the perceptions of horticultural activities in the formal curriculum. The target horticultural activities that were selected were those using natural objects like potted plants, water, wind, soil, stones, etc. as the topic or subject of activities, and those with different topics but are mentioning plants or natural objects as an example at least twice. The 150 selected horticultural activities were classified by life-based theme, activity type, activity domain, and medium. As a result of examining horticultural activities by life-based theme, there were 150 horticultural activities (21.55%): 40 in Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter (5.75%), 34 in Animals, Plants, and Nature (4.89%), 22 in Environment and Life (3.16%), 19 in Our Country (2.73%), and nine in Our Neighborhood (1.29%), nine in Various Countries of the World (1.29%), four in Health and Safety (0.57%), four in Living tools (0.57%), four in Transportation (0.57%), three in Kindergarten and Friends (0.43%), two in Me and My Family (0.29%; χ²=130.427, p < .001). As a result of examining horticultural activities by activity type, there were 61 free choice activities (40.67%), 80 large and small group activities (53.33%), and nine outdoor play activities (6.00%), indicating that outdoor play was the fewest activity type (χ²=54.040, p < .001). The results of analyzing horticultural activities by activity domain showed that there were 25 in conversation (16.67%), 19 in science (12.50%), 14 in art (9.33%), 14 in cooking (9.33%), 10 in fairy tales (6.00%), nine in music (6.00%), eight in language (5.33%), eight in number operation (5.33%), eight in others (5.33%), six in children's plays (4.0%), six in games (4.0%), four in body and movement (2.67%), three in stacking (2.00%), three in roles (2.00%), three in rhythm (2.00%), two in children's poems (1.33%), two in field experience (1.33%) and one in outside play (0.67%; χ²=87.600, p < .001). As a result of examining the mediums used in the horticultural activities, 46 activities (30.67%) directly used plants as the mediums, 11 activities (7.33%) used soil such as stones, gravel, and earth as the mediums instead of plants, four activities (2.67%) used dry plants such as branches and dry leaves as the mediums, and 89 activities (59.33%) used videos, photos of plants, and pictures of plants as the mediums (χ²=121.307, p < .001).

• Journal of the Korean Society of Floral Art and Design
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• no.41
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• pp.155-169
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• 2019

This study aims at analyzing educational effects of the horticultural picture books, which are depending on B.S. Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives. After collecting various horticulture-related picture books, this study classified them by the B.S bloom's educational taxonomy. There were objectives of the cognitive domain, objectives of the affective domain, psychomotor domain in plants and gardening activities. And the cognitive domain, affective domain, psychomotor domain subdivided into the sub-region can learn from the horticulture picture books to teach the unique characteristics could be found. To know the teachers' perceptions of the effectiveness of using picture books in the horticulture class, questionnaire were analyzed from the survey. As a result, by Bloom's educational taxonomy area they preferred children's books. Teacher think that fairy tale books promote the interest of the children and have the advantage of fostering creativity. In addition, an easy point to get in school, lack of hours in the effective education to help horticulture that was expected. The cognitions of most effective storytelling method of horticulture picture book was story immersion. And the effective activity after reading picture book was drawing picture. Also, the most effective teaching materials was a real-life picture.

• Journal of People, Plants, and Environment
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.29-38
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• 2021

Background and objective: The physical environment where children spend most of their time is closely associated with their emotional development. To improve the emotional health of children, the introduction of natural elements in the indoor space has been suggested, the benefits of which have been shown in preliminary studies. This study aims to examine the effects that a biowall - a wall installation - in a classroom has on the emotional health of children in kindergarten. Methods: A total of four biowalls were separately installed in four kindergarten classrooms at a school in Seoul, South Korea, and the 60 children in these classrooms participated in the study. We assessed the children's emotional intelligence (via an Emotional Intelligence Rating Scale), resilience (via the Devereux Early Childhood Assessment), and eco-friendly attitudes (via the Children's Attitudes Toward Scale) before the installation of the biowalls and then again 3 months later. Results: The children's emotional intelligence, resilience, and eco-friendly attitudes had been significantly improved after the installation of the biowalls (p = .01). The sub-categories of the children's emotional intelligence and resilience were also significantly improved (p < .001). Conclusion: This study demonstrates the potential of biowalls-as an indoor environmental factor-in promoting the healthy emotional development of children. By bringing natural elements into indoor classroom settings, biowalls appear to increase children's direct/indirect contact with nature. To extrapolate the results of the study to the general population, future studies should be conducted with broader age groups.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Floral Art and Design
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• no.41
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• pp.3-12
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• 2019

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of forest play activities on children's emotional vocabulary change. Forest play activities were conducted for 498 children aged 4 to 5 years old who visited the environmental training in G city for forest play activity for 1 hour. As a result, positive vocabulary was significantly improved from 0.95±0.78 before forest play to 1.15±1.21 after forest play(p=.003) and negative vocabulary was significantly decreased from 1.27±1.58 to 0.41±1.10(p=.000). In the case of male children, positive vocabulary was increased significantly from 0.96±0.82 to 1.36±1.24(p=.000), in the case of negative vocabulary, it decreased significantly from 1.42±1.74 to 0.55±1.30(p=.000). In the case of female children, negative vocabulary was significantly decreased from 1.12±1.37 to 0.26±0.26(p=.000), but the positive vocabulary increase was not significant(p=.851). As a result of age, for a 4-year-old children, positive vocabulary did not show significant difference between before and after forest play(p=.471), and negative vocabulary was significantly increased from 1.04 ± 1.42 before forest play to 0.41±1.16 after forest play(p=.000). For a 5-year-old children, positive vocabulary was increased significantly from 0.96±0.85 to 1.23±1.21(p=.001) and negative vocabulary was decreased significantly from 1.41±1.65 to 0.41±1.06(p=.000). As a result of this study, it was found that play activities using various natural objects in the forest were directly related to nature, resulting in positive vocabulary increase and negative vocabulary decrease.

• Journal of People, Plants, and Environment
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.47-53
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• 2020

This study conducted a horticultural therapy program for trainees entrusted to the Juvenile Classification Review Center in order to fill the educational gap while providing emotional stability during the one-month period of commissioned education. The effects of horticultural therapy were examined by the pretest and posttest changes of the emotional items such as anxiety, self-esteem, self-efficacy and stress index. As the research method, this study used the one-group pretest-posttest experimental design on 16 female trainees of commissioned education staying at the Juvenile Classification Review Center in the juvenile reformatory located in A city. The horticultural therapy program was carried out in four sessions: two on flower arrangement and two on planting. The scores before and after the horticultural therapy program were measured using the Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale (RCMAS) to examine the effects of horticultural therapy on the reduction of anxiety for the adolescents staying in the Juvenile Classification Review Center. The results show that there was significant decrease in the mean of anxiety from 62.5 (SD = 6.8) to 57.6 (SD = 8.1) points after the program (p = .002). There was no significant change in self-esteem, which was 76.9 (SD = 11.2) before the horticultural therapy and 78.3 (SD = 8.7) after the therapy (p = .420). In self-efficacy, there was no significant change from 72.9 (SD = 10.9) before and 75.1 (SD = 11.0) after horticultural therapy (p = .178). In order to examine the physiological changes in such emotional functions, this study measured the stress index using the uBioMacpa as the tool. The result of the measurement showed that there was a significant change in the mean from 33.8 (SD = 2.3) before to 31.1 (SD = 2.2) after the horticultural therapy (p < .001).