The analysis of the influence of picture book on early children's ideas about the sun and the moon

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Many studies of the scientific recognition in early childhood have been done in the field of the naive physics and naive biology by Clement and Carey. But the study of the influence of picture books on early child's scientific recognition has not yet been done.So the objective of our study is (1) to research the history of Japanese science educational system for the elementary school pupil of the lower grade and preschool child for the period from Meiji era to Heisei era, (2) to research the prior concepts of early children particularly about the air, light and astronomy, (3) to research the influence of fictional and scientific picture books on early child's concepts after reading them the books.The key results of our study are as follows ;(1) We had such nurturing as the “Observation" in the kindergarten and the “Observation for nature" in the lower class of elementary school before World War II. But nowadays there has been no obvious scientific educational system covering from the kindergarten to the lower class of the elementary school.(2) A picture book has the potentiality of changing early child's concept though few children are influenced.(3) The concept influenced by a picture book can be kept at least for one month.The final goal of our study is to investigate whether the early child's fictional concept acquired by a fictional picture book is opposed to the child's scientific concept acquired by the observation of nature or not and also how early children understand fictional and scientific concept without contradiction. We believe that our study will give a great contribution to early child's science education at this point.