원예활동 프로그램이 유아의 환경 인식과 확산적 사고에 미치는 영향

Effects of Horticultural Activity Program on Environmental Perceptions and Divergent Thinking of Young Children

The purpose of this study was to investigate that horticultural activity program affects the young children’s attitude of environmental perceptions and divergent thinking. The subjects are children (4-5 years old) who attend in D and J elementary school kindergarten, Gyeongsan, Daegu. The experiment period was from May 11 to July 16, 2010 at every Thursday 10 am for 1 hour. The horticultural activity program was carried out through total 10 times. Through the test result of childhood environmental perceptions, both groups such as sub-item environmental perception and environmental attitude were improved (P<0.01), and overall score also improve (P<0.01). The results of divergent thinking tests shows that overall score significantly improved in sub-item originality (P<0.05), vocabulary (P<0.05), and elaboration (P<0.01), respectively. From these results, horticultural activity program has important effects to children’s environmental awareness and expansive creativity. Therefore, childhood education with horticultural activity program should be introduced and horticultural activity program using the recycled materials could be expanded.