ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Environmental Psychology
This article is part of the Research TopicPlace and Identity in a Changing WorldView all 10 articles
Perceived space characteristics fostering friendship with place, peers and nature in the preschool yard
Provisionally accepted
- 1Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden
- 2Department of People and Society, Faculty of Landscape Architecture, Horticulture and Crop Production Science, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Lomma, Skane County, Sweden
- 3Department of Applied Educational Science, Faculty of Social Sciences, Umeå University, Umea, Västerbotten, Sweden
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Preschool facilities in dense urban conditions with more plain open spaces and artificial materials put children´s access to nature at risk. In the transformation towards sustainable futures, children's place preferences can be an important guide to the planning and design of outdoor environments where they can develop bonds and friendships with place, peers and nature. We know that there are useful affordances for children in the preschool yard, but less about how they make meaning of these features in their development of a sense of place. This is a study investigating favorite places during walk and talks on preschool yards with children 3 to 5 years old in a Swedish municipality. Field notes, maps, and photos documented how the children use and make meaning in the preschool yard. The results are six perceived space characteristics: Sandbox space, Artificial dwelling space, Bushy space, Woody space, Borderland Space, and Temporary space. The results are discussed in the light of bonds with place, peer, and nature being formative of children´s place-identity and burgeoning development of a sense of place. It suggests more attention is paid to the general characteristics of children´s outdoor spaces as they are perceived by children, in addition to basic requirements on size and functionality.
Keywords: Outdoor environment, preschool, Children´s play, education for sustainability, sense of place, place attachment, Nature based solutions, Landscape architecture
Received: 17 Apr 2025; Accepted: 28 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Mårtensson, Gabriel, Félix and Manni. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Fredrika Mårtensson, fredrika.martensson@slu.se
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