Study On The Design Of Guangzhou Kindergarten Outdoor Playground

The concern of early childhood development has largely increased with the social development and progress while the educational mode of kindergartens developing from the custody mode to play-based curriculum today. Play plays a very important role in preschool education and childhood development. This study examined the quality of outdoor play and discussed the design measures for the outdoor playground of Guangzhou kindergartens based on landscape architecture and play theory. The Parten-Piaget Scale was used to study the social levels and the variety of children’s outdoor play and to link between the play behaviors and playground elements.The main content of this thesis contains four sections:The first chapter reviewed domestic and foreign researches on playground environmental design today and proposed methodology and framework for the research.The second chapter outlined the psychological and physiological characteristics of preschool children, clarified the levels and stages of early childhood play development and introduced Frost Playground Evaluation System and Parten-Piaget Scale as research tools.The third chapter recorded the field investigation and the questionnaire study carried through in this research that had collected situation of kindergarten outdoor playgrounds and children’s play status as well as experience of preschool teachers and parents. The relationship between the research objects and the state of children’s play was also analyzed. Field investigation studied several Guangzhou kindergartens’ outdoor playgrounds through site recording, behavior recording, comprehensive observation, statistics, analysis and other methods. Some of the teachers, children and parents of these kindergartens were interviewed. Frost Playground Evaluation System was employed to examine the quality of the play environments.According to the objective research in the previous chapters and the preschool educational purposes in Guangzhou, the fourth Chapter proposed design recommendations based on play requirements. The spatial forms that meet the types and developmental stages of play was clarified and an ideal partition mode for kindergarten outdoor playgrounds was proposed according to play types that include functional play, constructive play, dramatic play and playwith-rules. The design and selection of play facilities as well as a number of other design proposals were also discussed.