어린이박물관에서의 ‘생태유아교육’ 실천방안 모색

Abstract

Today, our children are living without nature, play, or childlikeness. The desirable direction of early childhood education that we should seek is the one aimed to restore children’s things that have been lost, thereby returning a happy childhood to them. ‘Eco Early Childhood Education (Eco ECE)’has walked that path for the past 30 years or more. In this era of climate crisis and life crisis, we must ultimately be able to practice saving lives by means of child saving and education saving through Eco ECE. In this paper, I will try to introduce the characteristics and practice cases of this Eco ECE, and to find ways to incorporate them in children’s museums. First, I will briefly introduce the characteristics and practice cases of Eco Early Childhood Education (Eco ECE). Eco ECE is a declaration to find the essence of early childhood education, which is intended to put children’s happiness first by restoring nature, play, and childlikeness to children by adding ‘Eco’ in front of the term Early Childhood Education, as well as a declaration to practice saving lives through early childhood education in this era. It is Korea’s self-sustaining early childhood education designed to raise children according to natural principles so that they can live according to the nature of life they were born with, as well as life-saving early childhood education based on the parenting wisdom of their ancestors. Representative activities that have been practiced include outdoor play, walking, gardening, outside play, meditation, fingertip play, urban-rural exchange, senior-child interaction, inter-age integration and forest education. In the meantime, Eco ECE has made efforts to restore nature, play, and childlikeness to children, and the core of the practice for that can be seen as the results of raising the problems regarding “time, space, and humans” in early childhood education and newly reorganizing “time, space, and humans” to solve them. Therefore, I would like to present practical measures for eco early childhood education in children’s museums by classifying them into time, space, and human aspects. Regarding time aspects, it has been proposed that educational activities should be organized by quarterly education programs according to seasons rather than special exhibitions, together with content and languages suitable for the developmental level of young children. Regarding space aspects, it is necessary to organize indoor and outdoor expandable educational activities that lead from the interior of the museum to nature outside the museum, and to plan a program linking the children’s museum with home and early childhood educational institutions. Regarding human aspects, it is necessary to plan content suitable for the age level of infants and toddlers and usable for the mixed age level as well, and to consider the roles of parents and grandparents who come with the infants, as well as the roles of teachers. Educational activities for infants and toddlers in children’s museums should not be a means of teaching that emphasizes the learning of knowledge, but they should be activities that allow one to enjoy a different cultural space crossing the inside and outside in a leisurely time range away from everyday life and also feel one’s identity in the encounter between the past and the present through harmony among humans of various ages.