Recently, interest and social expectation for children's environment are on the rise. The needs for construction of safe and pleasant child care environment has bees agreed with. Especially, as the number of children who are wanted to go center jumped with additional support the government for child care business, centers have also seen a boost. But as number of child care centers increases rapidly in short period, the quality of centers is more inferior to before. and the space and facility level of many centers don't reach in legal minimum standard. In addition to, when child care centers are reviewed, it tend to be judged by one standard without considering connection with sense of values about child care or philosophy, child's traits, surrounding environment etc. Therefore, it is important to construct environment that can consider children's physical development and behavioral characteristic as well as basic element such thing as protection and support activity for current child care centers. This study presupposes that physical environment of child care centers makes important effect on teacher's motion and child's development, then it is to investigate it's characteristics in physically space, facilities, outdoor playground. And It is to identify space and accommodations, outdoors facilities which can support activity smoothly inside and outside. As a result, it is try to offer appliable basic information about the child-friendly environment of child care centers.

The purpose of this study is to develop the playground environment model for child care center by analyzing user needs of playground environment. To systemize the playground environment design factors and guidelines, we reviewed the previous research, actual measurement and observation were used as the research methodology. And to recognize the needs of users, the survey and picture survey was conducted to the staffs and children. The scope of survey included child care centers in Seoul and Daejeon, ultimately selecting 12 places in Seoul and 13 places in Daejeon. In terms of the survey period, actual measurement was conducted from June of 2006 to February of 2007, survey and picture survey was conducted from August to September of 2006. For analysis, we used SPSS 10.0 to check the frequency and percentage, as well as to perform cluster analysis.The findings of research can be summarized as below: 1. In playground environment, we observed the area of play ground and ground cover, the independence of play area, play equipment, and the composition of play area. The result of observation showed that while playground area varied widely, ground cover, play equipment, and the composition of play area turned out to be identical, regardless of the playground's area. Therefore, in order to classify various playground environments, we categorized them into 5 types, using the number of children and the area of play ground as a category. Type A had large facilities and small playground area. Type B had small sized facilities and large playground area. Type C had medium sized facilities and small playground area. Type D had medium sized facilities but large playground area. Type E had large sized facilities and large playground area.2. On the other hand, staffs wanted a tunnel, playhouse, comprehensive play equipment, and a maze to be installed as play facilities, and there were requests for adventure play area and carpenter play area. The picture survey to children showed that they wanted equipments that can provide more thrill, adventure and challenge to them than the ones they see now. Therefore, existing child care center play environments must change from the monotonous and identical environments to the ones that can provide diversities, challenges, and adventures. In the contexts of 5 playground types suggested by this research, type B and D, E where the area of playground were larger than the legally required, should include various play areas and install appropriate play equipments and facilities. Type A and C where the area were small, should provide multipurpose play area to attract the various play behaviors of children.Key Words : child care centers, composition of outdoor play area, outdoor play activity programs, planning of outdoor play environment * 본 논문은 2005년도 학국학술진흥재단의 지원에 의하여 연구되었음 (KRF-2005-041-C00546).

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The purpose of this study is to find out the characteristics of activity areas according to the age difference and provide the alternatives for space planning of activity areas in classroom of childcare centers. This study used the content analysis method for field survey data collected from 36 classrooms of 9 childcare centers in the Daejeon area. Floor plans were converted to Autocad drawings to analyze the characteristics of activity areas. The results of this study were as follows; 1) In case of 0 to 2-year-old classrooms, they had 6 activity areas such as gross-motor area, role play, block building, language, creative expression, exploration/manipulation area. The activity area with the most low frequency was gross-motor area. 2) In case of 0 to 2-year-old classrooms, the size of activity area was in order of gross-motor area > role play > block building > language > creative expression > exploration/manipulation area. In case of 3 to 5-year-old classrooms, the size of activity area was in order of language > art > role play > math > block building > science > tone and rhythmic area.3) The central areas with easy access in 0 to 2-year-old classrooms were Large-motor and Imaginary Play Areas. Also, more isolated areas were Manupulatives and Block Areas. The central areas with easy access in 3 to 5-year-old classrooms were Arts, Numbers and Manupulatives. While more isolated areas were Music, Movement and Science Areas.

This study will examine the current condition of outdoor play in child care centers and the overall perception of teachers on outdoor play in regards to its related programs and children's reaction to them. Through examining such issues, this study will provide the basic data that can be applied in planning appropriate outdoor play activities, programs and environments. For the study, we surveyed teachers and directors of child care centers using a structured questionnaire. The objects of the survey were 22 child care centers in Daejeon and Seoul, who agreed to conduct the survey. The survey was conducted from August 1 to September 30 2006; 220 copies were distributed, and 188 copies were collected. The results of the study can be summarized as follows: 1) The number of outdoor plays per week were on average 1~2 in most cases, although teachers believed the play should be done everyday. Outdoor play time was mostly 21~30 minutes, while teachers thought 31~40 minutes as appropriate. Children's reaction scored the highest when they played outdoors for 30 minutes every day with their teachers involved in the play. As a result, we have concluded that the appropriate outdoor play should be conducted everyday for 30~40 minutes. 2) Outdoor play was mostly conducted as part of the overall educational plan rather than a separate plan. Since outdoor play affects children's development as much as indoor play, there is a need for development of a specific and separate plan for various outdoor play programs. 3) The outdoor play program that was most often conducted was equipment play and sand play. This indicated the monolithic nature of the outdoor program. Given the fact that children enjoy outdoor plays a lot (M=4.71), various programs including adventure play, sensitive play, and carpenter play should be developed. 4) In outdoor play, the teacher's role included supervising and interacting with children. According to the survey, teachers had a good understanding of the importance on safety and supervising issues in outdoor plays. However they seemed to overlook the importance of having better programs and improving teacher's participation to the play. Despite the importance of outdoor play to children's development, the result shows that teachers have tendencies to limit and obstruct outdoor plays by emphasizing supervising and safety issues instead. 5) Children's safety should not be the only consideration for outdoor plays; teachers ought to better understand that children's development can be maximized by the play. Furthermore, there should be emphasis placed on the program development and teacher's participation; teacher's participation should actively encourage the interactions between a child and a teacher, as well as among children.