"Nature and Us" ESD Center
Early Childhood Education for Sustainable Development
Books and papers
Here you can find some of our articles and abstracts of reports presented at conferences and published in journals, and also samples from books by Natalya Ryzhova, full access to which will be available soon.
List of papers
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Priority Sustainable Development Challenges: how kindergartens can help to face them (full text)
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The project "Sustainable kindergarten for Children and Adults" (abstracts)
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Creative Growth of Children and Adults as a Condition for ESD (abstracts)
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Supporting Nature Diversity – Supporting Culture Diversity (full text)
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ESD for Kids and Adults: Inhabitants of Big Cities (abstracts)
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Training of pedagogues in Russia: A retrospective analysis (full text)
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Re-creating Natural Phenomena with Children: Creativity and Education Combined (abstracts)
Priority SD challenges: how kindergartens can help to face them
The article will be published in the next volume of the OMEP Ireland Journal of Early Childhood Studies
The project "Sustainable kindergarten for Children and Adults"
Abstracts from the report made at the 63rd OMEP World Conference in Hong Kong, 2011
Full description and detailed guidelines for the project "Sustainable kindergarten" will be available soon.
Creative Growth of Children and Adults as a Condition for ESD
European Conference “Perspectives on Creativity and Learning in Early Childhood. Book of Abstracts
Supporting Nature Diversity – Supporting Culture Diversity
European OMEP Conference”Respect for a Child”. A Child in the World of Education – Education in the World of Child
Introduction to the article. Full text will be available soon.
ESD for Kids and Adults: Inhabitants of Big Cities
The 65th OMEP World Conference. Abstract Book
Training of pedagogues in Russia: A retrospective analysis
JOURNAL OF TEACHER EDUCATION AND EDUCATORS, Volume-1 Number-1 2012
The article
The abstract describe in brief the project "My City: Ecological Atlas" that includes a bo ok and educational videos. Full kit of the project will be available soon.
Re-creating Natural Phenomena with Children: Creativity and Education Combined
Abstracts for the OMEP European Conference “Perspectives on Creativity and Learning in Early Childhood"
The abstract gives brief instructions how to model volcano eruptions and landscapes in kindergarten. Full kit of the project will be available soon.
List of books
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Laboratory in the Kindergarten
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My City: an Ecological Atlas
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Animal Tales: Write a Letter to the Owl
Laboratory in Kindergarten
The book takes a systematic approach to support of children's natural drive for research and experiment with redard to nature.
The book contains detailed step-by-step recommendations: how to set up a lab for kids in a kidergarten or at home, how to use waste to create lab equipment, how to conduct experiments.
The plan follows the pattern of the program "Nature is Our Home", including units "Earth", "Water", "Air", "Sun", "Soil", "Plants and animals", "Humans and Nature", etc.
Main objective of the program is to support children's initiative for playing and experimenting, and the book tells how to do it.
My City: an Ecological Atlas
A richly illustrated atlas with shematic maps explains in a simple way to the young kids environmental aspects of life in their city:
- city animals and plants
- use of resources
- pollution
- climate
- transportation
- specially protected areas
- endangered specious
and tells about basic actions one can do to preserve and improve city's natural environment.
Animal Tales: Write a Letter to the Owl
Based on the idea of referring to animals' habitats as their 'address' and their ecological niche as 'profession' we created a game where children correspond with animals. Children compose a letter to their favorite animal and invite them for a visit, if they can manage to provide the conditions necessary for living and feeding of the correspondent.
This approach helps children realize the connection of any living being to its environment and the fact that wild animals should not be removed from their natural surroundings.
We devised several specific learning scenarios for learning about endangered species, animals of different natural zones, animals of different types of environment, differences in feeding habits an others.
Ecological fairy-tales
The Little Grey Riding Hood
and The Red Wolf
Once there lived a girl. She was called … the Little Grey Riding Hood. The riding hood, or, more exactly, the hat was woven by her grandmother of the hair of the old Wolf, who once tried to eat her. Then she was still a little girl and she was called Little Red Riding Hood...
Tale of the Golden Fish
Once there was a man. He was neither tall, nor short, neither fat, nor lean, neither clever nor silly. In fact, he was quite an average man. Like many others of his kind. He went hunting wild beasts, breathed fresh air, drank spring waters, and watched colourful sunset...
The Cat Magellan and
the Tree Quercus
Meet the cat. His name is Magellan. He's naughty and inquisitive. All that many cats do is lie on their sofa lazily munching some brand cat chow. But our Magellan is different. Most of all he likes to travel. He got his name thanks to his love of journeys...