Action Research On The Promotion Of Children’s Life Cognition By Natural Corner Activities

Life cognition is an important part of life education.Preschool period is the foundation stage of lifelong education.At this time,children’s formation of correct life cognition can help them establish correct life concepts and attitudes,and promote their physical and mental development and good personality.As an appropriate educational approach for life cognition,natural corner theme activity can enable children to have a correct cognition of life on the basis of living the growth,reproduction,aging and death of plants and animals,which is in line with their age characteristics and thinking characteristics.Therefore,with the help of natural corner and taking life cognition as the entry point to carry out the theme activities of natural corner,children can learn about life,feel life,respect life,love life and fear life in the process of living,aging,illness and death of plants and animals.After consulting the relevant literature,this study divides life cognition into three parts:source of life(reproduction),growth of life(growth,aging),and death of life(death).A large group of young children in a kindergarten in Chongqing was used as the research object.Based on pre-testing the status quo of children’s life cognition,interviewing teachers and investigating parents about life cognition education related issues to understand the status of children’s life cognition,in cooperation with T1 teacher,we designed a natural corner theme activity to promote the development of children’s life cognition.Teacher T1,as the implementer of the activity plan,followed the four spiral research steps of "planning,action,observation,and reflection",and carried out three rounds of action research combining games,inquiry,discussion,and drawing.In the process of action research,the researcher collects data in the process of action research through several specific methods,such as observation records,anecdotal records,videos,interviews,children’s works.After each round of action research,the researcher and T1 teacher will reflect and discuss together based on the collected data,and improve the problems in the previous round of action research during the next round of action research.After the three-round action research,through quantitative investigations of pre-and post-test children’s life cognition achievements and qualitative analysis of first-hand practice data,it was found that the theme activity of the natural corner can promote the development of young children’s life cognition.Young children have developed a love and concern for animals and plants,which has changed their understanding of their own lives.Results from action research,relevant suggestions are made from the aspects of teachers,families,and kindergartens: on the teachers’ side,they should establish the correct view of children,life,and teachers and learn theoretical knowledge such as life education and life cognition.Pay attention to the relevant strategies of life cognition education.On the family side,we should establish the awareness of life education and encourage young children to interact with flora and fauna.On the kindergarten side,we should strengthen the activities of natural corner themes and teaching and research activities of life cognition,and give teachers the right to create life cognition education related activities.Due to the limited time,energy and research ability of researcher,there are still some shortcomings in this research.First of all,in the research object,this study only selected a large class of children as the research object,and the conclusions and recommendations of the action research lacked certain representativeness.Secondly,due to the limited professional knowledge and curriculum design ability of the researcher,the design of the activity plan for the promotion of children’s life cognition by the activities of the natural corner is not perfect enough,which makes it not universal.