Effects of Forest Experience on Young Children’s Playfulness and Emotional Intelligence

This study was conducted to investigate the effects of forest experience activities on the playfulness and emotional intelligence of children who participated in experience-based forest education programs. For this, pre and postquestionnaires were conducted with 53 children from ages three to five who attended forest experience programs from ‘Sonamu Nuri Forest Experience Center for Children’ in Gangneung from March to November 2016. For the children to understand and answer the questions easily, teachers helped them to understand the questions about forest experience activities before they participated in the programs, and the nursing and head teachers who had been in charge of the children over 6 months assessed their behavioral changes with the pre and post questionnaires. The programs consist of observation and exploration activities, free plays, crafting with natural objects, five-sense activities, physical activities, etc. As a result, the children’s playfulness and emotional intelligence showed statistically significant increase after the programs. Through the forest experience activities, the children could differentiate their own and others’ emotions by accessing natural ecosystem and interacting with nature. Ultimately, the activities helped the participants improve the emotional intelligence to take the initiative and playfulness to cooperate with friends and play a leading role. The results of the investigation have a significance in enhancing the value of forest experience activities for children as well as providing basic data for expanding forest education for children and improving the quality. However, as this research was conducted with only 53 children, it can be difficult to generalize the results. Continuous observation of the variables and further discussion are also required, since the results were obtained from a single post-test. Therefore, follow-up research needs to investigate the relationship among variables more closely and perform continuous monitoring and effect verification.