Associate Professor, Dr.Hab. S.V. Kakhnovich¹
Professor, Dr.Hab., Head of Physical Education and Special Training Chair V.V. Izvekov²
Associate Professor, PhD K.V. Izvekov^2
1Mordovian State Pedagogical Institute named after M.E. Evsevev, Saransk, Republic of Mordovia 
²Saransk Cooperative Institute, affiliate of Russian Cooperation University, Saransk

Keywords: healthy preschool education (PSE) environment, general culture of child.

Special attention in the modern education system is given to the initiatives to build up a due healthy environment in children’s establishments. We would mention the following factors and steps of key importance for success of the healthy PSE environment building process: analysing the contents and practices of the education, breeding, developing and domestic activities; applying due ergonomic, sanitary and hygienic standards to the relevant facilities including PSE studios, classes, training zones, physical culture facilities etc.; and making due account of the age specifics of the underage trainees. The healthy PSE environment is to be duly equipped with visual teaching aids, practical instructions, toys and furniture as required by the relevant ergonomic, sanitary and hygienic standards. A pivotal condition for the educational process success at a PSE establishment is the environment that at least ensures the physical and mental balance of the human body being maintained and, ideally, children and educators’ health being improved.

A child’s education, breeding and development process will be successful and of no damage to the individual mental condition when it is designed with due consideration for the individual traits, gender and age specifics and the relevant needs in high-quality rest, sleep and nutrition. Health may be interpreted as the bodily ability to stand stresses still unavoidable in any educational process. A human health cannot be limited by the bodily immunity to diseases as such. We would emphasize the bodily ability to keep functional balance of the qualitative and quantitative elements of structural and sensorial information (as provided by I.I. Sokovnya-Semenova [8]). Structural information is manifested by the human’s body functioning at the relevant structural levels – starting from cellular one and to overall conditioning, with the basics of valueology being applied for analysis. We consider herein valueology in a traditional way as the science and educational discipline designed to establish due conditions for disease prevention [6]. Sensorial information implies visual, audio, tactile, taste and olfactory data received by the human body from the surrounding world through the relevant sense organs. This is the reason why a variety of aesthetics-centred requirements generated by practical aesthetics and fundamental design is applied to form the healthy PSE environment in addition to the above ergonomic, sanitary and hygienic standards.

The human ability and willingness to adhere to a healthy lifestyle may be considered an indispensable part of an individual general culture. It should be noted that a healthy PSE environment is a key tool to form a good general culture of a child, including the interpersonal relationship culture which basics are formed and fostered in a preschool age to contribute to the general culture and eventually form a key element of the individual healthy lifestyle.

It is the preschool age when the basic individual traits of an adult person are formed. Good understanding of the importance of interpersonal relationship by a child helps shape up certain culture of such relationship and lays a foundation for future success in adaptation to the world, surroundings and society, in creative attitudes to social challenges, socializing process and career based on the individual potential abilities being fully developed and employed. It is the well-developed basic interpersonal culture and social skills that help the child adjust to new social environments and challenges.

The issue of the culture of interpersonal relationship formation in preschoolers is viewed among the key educational issues since a person is developed and socialized through integrated education, culturing and development processes. Modern society tends to acknowledge the fact that an educational process is not limited to knowledge acquisition only, but also gives due social development and spiritual formation. And this is the reason for the national educational community giving a growing priority to the child’s personality shaping efforts in the educational and training process. We believe that the personality formation process will be duly focused on the spiritual component development in addition to the education and training components in the process. Spiritual values are traditionally viewed as determined by the following: morality, ethics, world outlook, social attitudes, i.e. the personal behaviour on the whole generally manifested through the individual behavioural model. And it is the preschool age that is critical in the interpersonal relationship culture establishment process.

Actors of the practical education process have long being noting that a human behaviour is largely dictated by internal forces – in addition to the externally manifested ones – that cannot be always studied using visual monitoring methods. It is the latent internal needs and motivations that are known to drive the individual emotions and feeling in particular and behaviour on the whole and thereby contribute to the human individuality shaping process. Spirituality, individuality and personality of every human being largely manifest themselves in the culture of interpersonal relationship where they are most clearly visible [5].

Basics of a general individual culture are evident in the psychological comfort level being attained in the education, training and development processes. This comfort may be interpreted as the stress-free climate, and one of the tools to form this climate is the healthy preschool education environment building method. Developers of the modern healthy preschool education environment building technologies state that “it is the state of the human soul that is viewed as the key element of the individual health” [3, p. 4].

Efforts to improve aesthetics of a preschool educational environment are designed to help build up the general culture of a person. Art-therapy is also applied to help form a due healthy PSE environment. The art-therapeutic technologies in the healthy PSE environment are designed to give the means to test the actual mental conditions of the children, support the behavioural model correction by general therapeutic actions and develop a basic general culture in the children.

It is through the artistic images created by a child that its internal world may be understood. The problems of artistic image (including kinetic drawing) interpretation have been subject to studies by many national and foreign researchers including U. Ave-Lallemant [1], R. Berns [10], A.I. Zakharov [2], B.V. Zegarnik [4], S. Kaufman [10], N.A. Kursheva [7], G. Homentauskas [9] and others. We would underline the following specifics in the artistic image creation processes that may be viewed as the most important for the actual mental state of the child being explored:

1. The artistic image creation process helps remove the natural nervous stresses the children are exposed to in the new knowledge and skills mastering process. The kinetic drawing activity largely “disinhibits” (the term offered by G. Homentauskas [9]) the child’s behaviour and helps establish a favourable communication environment for the teacher’s relationship with a child.

2. In the process of kinetic drawing, the child records his/ her emotions with a pencil as demonstrated by the colours, shapes and images selected and drawn on paper. An adult watching the kinematic drawing process and communicating with the child finds out the concerns and fears of the child and his/ her actual mental condition.

3. Projective/ graphical tests based on the kinematic drawing exercises have been widely acknowledged as highly informative research tools as they may be applied to collect information about the child’s family, his/her attitudes to him(her)self and surrounding people and his/her health.

4. Modern art-therapy gives the highest priority to the children’s creative activity being encouraged. Kinetic drawing practices are often instinctively used to calm a child down. When engaged in the drawing process, the child forgets about stress and, among other things, he may destroy a drawing of a fearful image to clean up his/her mind of the disturbing impression or experience.

The projective/ graphic tests are based on the idea of a human mental state being reflected in the kinetic drawings. Modern analysis of the children’s creative/ artistic activity manifestations is based on the consciousness and activity integration concept offered in domestic psychology that implies, among other things, that the child’s emotional experience, sentiments and attitudes to him(her)self, surrounding people and healthy lifestyles may be found and explored in the products of their creative activity. And it is the modern art-therapeutic technology that may be successfully applied to form a due psychological comfort and good healthy environment in the children’s community. 

Preschool age is the time when the basics of the individual healthy lifestyles are formed as an integral part of the general individual culture with a systemic and dynamic personal status being attained based on the certain children’s level of knowledge about their own body and potential harmful effects on it; and with due motivations and values being fostered in the children and supported by practical everyday activities in families and PSE establishments. The education resources of the PSE establishments and families are mobilized and integrated to foster the strive for healthy life in a child. Children’s motivations in the preschool age are known to be dominated by the positive emotions triggered by the physical culture practices. When children show positive emotions in kinetic games and physical exercises, these practices may be considered as facilitating their natural motivations for a healthy lifestyle being formed. Physical education of preschool children should be duly integrated in the general education and training processes rather than viewed as a separate isolated element of education. Physical culture practices are to be applied on a permanent and broad basis rather than be limited to the scheduled practices in gyms; they may include physical education breaks in the class education hours, team sports and kinetic games, active recreational sports etc.

In the healthy PSE environment building process a due priority is given to the individualized approaches sensitive to every child. We interpret the healthy PSE environment as the integrity of the personality developing situations designed to help the children efficiently socialize and communicate with their peers, families and important people around them. The healthy PSE environment implies the preschool-age children being actively involved in the education and socializing processes to master the culture of interpersonal relationship, basics of healthy lifestyles in the education and training processes designed in a stress-free and regulations-free format with top priority being given to the art-therapeutic tools and behavioural self-control developing mechanisms – to help the child make his/her way from the externally controlled behavioural models to the genuine need and motivations for the healthy lifestyle. 

References

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Corresponding author: kahnowish@mail.ru

Abstract

The article considers the key factors and technologies to develop a healthy preschool education (PSE) environment and explores contributions of the healthy environment and physical education to the child’s general culture formation process. Special emphasis is made on the role of qualitative and quantitative elements of structural and sensorial information being formed by and acquired from the healthy PSE environment by a child. The study also considers grounds for the art-therapeutic technologies and a variety of aesthetics-centred factors being applied to facilitate the healthy PSE environment formation process.