Preschool children get to know the world around them in different learning environments. In my master's thesis, I focused on children's understanding of the living and the non-living in different learning environments of preschool. There are large individual differences in children's understanding of these concepts, which are related to development of thinking and stimuli in the environment. A child's conception of the living gradually includes the child's knowledge that it is not necessary for all living things to move and have consciousness (plants), and that every living being comes from something, feeds, breathes, develops, reproduces and eventually dies. My starting point was Piaget's theory and recent research and critique of that theory. In the theoretical part, I also presented and analyzed the field of nature in the Slovenian Curriculum for Preschools (1999), forest pedagogy, and forest preschools and eco-preschools.
I researched how children's understanding conception of living and non-living concepts are influenced by the different learning environments of the preschool (if they have or not have a special program for learning about nature). I was also interested in whether the results matched with Piaget's theory and whether the different environments influenced the child's understanding of the concepts of animate and inanimate. With the help of my mentor and commentor, I have designed an instrument for the empirical research, that had 18 photographs showing animals, toys, living and non-living plants, and characters from cartoons and commercials … children aged 4-5 years from different preschool, namely, from the preschool with an additional forest program, from the eco preschool, and from the preschool, which does not carry out additional activities in the area. I conducted an individual structured interview with each child included in the simple. The child had to answer whether the thing in the photo was alive and why they thought so. I analyzed and interpreted the data qualitatively and quantitatively. With the comparisons between preschool or different learning environments we concluded that there is no difference between them, so that special emphasis on learning about nature does not affect the child's understanding of concepts of living or non-living. The children showed the best understanding of live animals and worst in characters from commercials and animated films.
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