Abstract (eng)
Children want to act independently, change and rearrange their environment, and they look proactively for challenges and solutions. The way they learn, plan, decide and act, by means of a permanent interaction between themselves and their environment, is crucial for children’s development processes.
However, the inactive living environment that most children experience often has a nega-tive impact on their development. In this context, psychomotor education plays an im-portant role in the creation of a positive living environment. Psychomotor education links physical and motoric processes on the one hand, and psychological and intellectual pro-cesses on the other. It regards the human being as a whole person who is constantly evolving.
The Masters’ thesis describes the development of children between the ages of two and six, explains the principles of facilitating psychomotor development and outlines the con-cept of space. The thesis gives a detailed interpretation of the concept of space, taking physical space with its material composition as a starting point and then extends that in-terpretation to the atmospheric and perceived learning environment. In doing so, the thesis identifies the close link between space and development: on the one hand, it explains which conditions the children’s living environment needs to fulfil from a psychomotor per-spective for it to become a space in which they can move about, play and learn; on the other hand, it explains the contribution that such a space makes to the development of a healthy personality. Following a theoretical introduction, the thesis highlights some models and practical examples of development environments and realms of experience that are ideal for children.