Love of Nature and Environmental Awareness in Preschool Education

Abstract

Nature is the combination of specific areas bearing vital importance for the children’s learning, discovery, body and mental health, social confidence, participation and interaction with nature and where they perceive environmental features and to being able to improve their abilities to solve problems based on cause and effect relation. Unfortunately, in especially metropolitan cities, children grow being isolated from nature today. This study was conducted to determine the awareness level of the preschool students in the City Centre of Malatya preschools based on nature friendly and child participative outdoor activities. A Questionnaire Survey was conducted with the participation of 148 students ages 5 to 6 presently attending in preschools in the City Centre of Malatya for this objective. It was found out from the total number of students who took and answered the questionnaire survey 56.8% like playing in the parks and green areas, 47.3% are disturbed by environmental pollution surrounding them, 48.6% do not like flowers and trees, 56.8% feel sorry when trees are chopped. In addition, majority of the students are bored with being in the classroom and want to go on outdoor activities during delivery of lessons and feel sad when nature gets harm.