Erken Çocukluk Eğitimi Kurumlarının Dış Mekanları Üzerine Bir Derleme: Tasarım ve Değerlendirme

The significance of play in early childhood is widely acknowledged depending on many empirical kinds of research. However, the play has been perceived as an activity that only occurs indoors till last years. That is the reason why all the arrangements and criteria for play supportive environments were presented for indoor learning environments. As a natural result of this case, the studies investigating outdoor environments and outdoor play presented many dramatic results. To illustrate, the studies put forward that outdoor environments became play environments that include fixed play equipment supporting only psychomotor development and lacking loose parts which allow children to use them creatively depending on their needs and interests. Thus, outdoor environments should be designed in a way that enable children to play different types of play including constructive and dramatic play, games with rules, associative and cooperative play. Yet, as much as the design of the outdoor environment, it is important to determine the factors, which decrease or increase the effectiveness of the design of the outdoor environment, and to make essential arrangements about them. That is the reason why, under the head of current knowledge, this study aimed to synthesize the conducted studies about outdoor play and the outdoor environment. Depending on this synthesize, several major principles were presented for both designers of outdoor environments, researchers and practitioners in the field of early childhood education.