Study On The Children’s Exploratory Behaviors In Preschool Building Play (in Kindergarten)

This study used qualitative research method, mainly used a method of events sampling observation. The study collected complete video information on preschool building play by observing the children from medium and small classes when the children are involved in the building play. On the basis of the video information, a variety of behaviors of children were identified. Researcher selected and arranged the excerpt on children’ s exploratory behaviors from complete video information, thereby to write cases. Based on the collation and analysis of the cases, researcher did the analysis of the process and influencing factors, the features, the functions of children’ s exploratory behaviors. In the end, is the conclusion and the reflection of this study.In the part of the analysis of the process and the influencing factors, researcher studied the entire process of children’ s exploratory behaviors, and analyzed the factors that influenced the process of children’ s exploratory behaviors. In the part of the analysis of the process, the entire process of children’ s exploratory behaviors were divided into start, process and end stage. In the beginning stage of children’ s exploratory behaviors, researcher analyzed the problems that children encountered in preschool building play, including selecting problems of building materials, learning and using problems of building skills, designing and rendering problems of the spatial structure. On the other hand, researcher explored three main body that caused children’ s exploratory behaviors, including children themselves, companions and teachers. In the process of children’ s exploratory behaviors, researcher analyzed the multiple channels that children used to solve the problems, including through children’ s own efforts to solving the problem, through companion’s help or inspiration to solving the problem, through the guidance of the teacher to solving the problem. In addition, researcher analyzed the multiple key strategies that children used to solve the problems, including through comparison, trial-and-error and substitution methods to solving the selecting problems of building materials; through observe imitate and practice methods to solving the learning and using problems of building skills; through graph and experience methods to solving the designing and rendering problems of the spatial structure. Finally, there is a brief analysis of the end stage of children’ s exploratory behaviors. In the part of the discuss of the influencing factor, this study analyzed the inner factors and external factors that affecting children’s exploratory behavior, among them, external factors are the key points. The inner factors that affecting children’ s exploratory behavior include:children’ s cognitive level and children’ s cognitive style. The external factors that affecting children’ s exploratory behavior include: the types, properties and updating of building materials; the atmosphere, space and time of building environment; the time and content of teachers’ guidance; the formation and maintain of peer relations.In the part of the analysis of the feature, researcher analyzed the age characteristic and sexual characteristic that children’ s exploratory behaviors showed. Among them, there are two age characteristics, including cooperative feature and symbolic feature. Cooperative feature embodied in: from “passive cooperative exploratory behavior” to “active cooperative exploratory behavior”;from “cooperative exploratory behavior that triggered by interest” to “cooperative exploratory behavior that triggered by consciousness and ability”. Symbolic feature embodied in: from “pure play symbolic exploratory behavior” to “creative symbolic exploratory behavior”; from “after the first do want symbolic exploratory behavior” to “ symbolic exploratory behavior in a planned way”. Age feature embodied in: girls prefer to the bright rich color building materials comparedwith boys; boys are more likely to try to build high difficulty challenges construct compared to girls; girls prefer to play the characters outside the building play compared with boys.In the part of the analysis of the function, researcher analyzed the direct and indirect functions of exploratory behaviors. Direct functions of exploratory behaviors include: meeting the needs of children’ s self-realization; improving children’ s original experience. Indirect functions of exploratory behaviors include: Exploratory behavior is an important way to acquire learning skills,at the same time, it is a kind of important way to promote children’ s cognitive development.Finally, is the conclusion and the reflection of this study. In the part of the conclusion,summarized the process and the influence, feature, function of exploratory behaviors. In the part of the reflection, including reflection of research topic selection, reflection of research methods,reflection of observation data collection process, reflection of observation information sorting and analyzing, reflection of study results, hoping to remedy for follow-up studies.