Recently, there has been a great demand for day nursery in Japan. The floor space per person, which is provided in minimum standards for child welfare facility, has not been revised for 60 years though this is the only criterion for the environmental level in day nursery. The purpose of this study is to consider whether it is relevant to use the floor space of eating and napping per person, for the means to reconsider the floor space per person which is not said to be well-founded scientifically. We observed four-year-old-children in detail while they were eating and napping. We also measured each space of nursery rooms. 4 nurseries fulfilling the following criteria were selected; eat and nap in the same room,20-30 children for each class, 2.0m2 per person in nursery room. As a result, we found that eating and napping space is 0.80-1.65m2 and 1.22-1.44m2 per person, respectively. Therefore, we figured that the necessary space of eating was 1.03m2 per person and of napping was 1.40m2 per person, respectively(2.43m2 per person in total)in order to make comfortable nursery room. To conclude, the eating and napping floor space may become one of the effective index to develop the nursery environment hereafter.
