Application of the Horticultural Therapy Activity to the Curriculum of Korean Kindergarten
Authors:   Asia-Europe Perspective Association, Kim Jung-Shin 
Published: June 2018

Today's rapid changes along with industrialization, urbanization, and the increase of nuclear family have arisen many of social problems such as people's loss of humanity and morality. A large number of scholars who are aware of those problems have made efforts to achieve well-being and relief of stress-which lead to sound development of human-by psychotherapy and counseling. Early childhood, especially, is an important time when the primary developmental areas are formed. Since an infant's value and attitude formed in this age can influence greatly to the attitude of the lest of his life, it can be said that a preventive program is very necessary.
As one of the measures, it is recently believed that forming fine behavior and value is essential for establishing upright personality and sociality. Accordingly, the horticultural therapy activity as a part of Nature Friendly Education in the fields of edu-care and early childhood education draws attention. However, current horticultural therapy activities as a natural friendly way in edu-care and early childhood educational institutes drill only fragmentary knowledge-such as unilateral teaching of certain plants or environments - or merely organize programs of natural observation. Moreover, most of them are not constant but designed to be one-off programs. Lack of diverse horticultural therapy programs which to be adopted in the field of edu-care and early childhood education as well as teachers' awareness make the constant horticultural therapy activities impossible.
Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine the overall condition and effectiveness of horticultural therapy activity in the field of edu-care and early childhood education as well as how it is related to the 7th National Kindergarten Curriculum by reviewing existing researches which are related to horticultural therapy activities for children. Analysing how the content of the horticultural therapy activity is related to the 7th National Kindergarten Curriculum in detail will contribute to applying horticultural therapy activities to the field of edu-care and early childhood education. To achieve the purpose, the study divided the contents of children's horticultural therapy activity into four domains-type of the plant, raising the plant well, making the use of the plant, and other horticultural activities-then collected some contents of horticultural therapy activity appliable to each domain, and finally analyzed the relationship with the 7th National Kindergarten Curriculum.
The early childhood is the time when natural or horticultural therapy activity can be performed most effectively since it is when one's emotion is sensitive. Also, since one's value and attitude formed in early childhood influence to the lest of his life enormously, it is very important to have an interest toward nature, experience it, and have a fine attitude toward the nature in this time. However, the realities are not supportive. Most of edu-care and early childhood educational institutes are located in apartment complexes or office districts so that there are difficulties to create a nature-experiencing environment. Besides, although an institute is located near natural environment, it rarely makes a conscious effort to apply the environmental interest to the actual classroom.
According to the existing studies, horticultural therapy activities among very curios and active children had positive effect on physical, emotional, socio-moral and cognitive-linguistic development, as a result, made their whole development possible. The existing studies also asserted that the horticultural therapy activity is highly related to diverse fields of studies, so that children can integrate diverse knowledge through horticultural therapy activities.