"Nature and Us" ESD Center
Early Childhood Education for Sustainable Development
The Program "Nature is Our Home"
This program is one of the most popular of those used in pre-school education in Russia. Several kindergartens are involved in this program as the experimental yards under the supervision of the author. Also the educative seminars for teachers are held periodically.
The main purpose of the program ‘Nature Is Our Home’ is to develop child’s personality, to make him creative, socially active, humane, capable of deep understanding and caring for nature and all the world around him.
Ecology, first of all, studies the relations of organisms with environment and with each other. That’s why it is especially important to show to the children the vast and complicated web of natural interrelations, to help them to see the fragility of these connections, how easy they could be damaged by human (the connections are presented to children as “the invisible threads of nature”). However contemporary ecology is a complex science. The program includes (at the comprehendable for the pre-school children level) the topics on bioecology (connections of living organisms with each other and with the environment), socio-ecology (the relations of men, society and nature), practical ecology (protection of environment). Much attention is paid to the issues of environmental safety and health. Emphasys is put on work with parents. They also get acquainted with the rules of environmental safety.
The program “Nature Is Our Home” consists of several units which share common content. Every unit has educational and emotional aspect. The content of a unit is presented through a series of logically connected topics.
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 The main aim |
 Experimenting |
 Playing |
 Making collections |
 Observation |
 Слайд8.PNG |
 On the ecological path |
 Painting |
 Work, observations, experiments |
 Environmental holidays |
 Children together with parents |
 Environmentally friendly behaviour |
 Teacher training |
The poster presents key points of the program.
Program "Nature is Our Home":
From city to tundra
The program has shown best results with children 5 — 7 years old. That is the age when a child becomes capable of evaluating the categories of reason and consequence, and he (or she) also starts to develop abstract thinking. These two aspects are crucial for understanding complex environmental interrelations. The contents of the program and practical recommendations are suited for the work with children of that particular age. All material is arranged in emotionally attractive and easily comprehensible way.Span of the program
The program includes two years of studying. The first cycle covers the first five units, the second cycle — the next 5 units. One of the program’s main ideas is that every aspect of the pre-school education should in some way be connected to environmental education. Therefore educators are recommended to plan the work to their own custom, regarding the curriculum and taking into account relation of the program to the other parts of the study process (e.g. an arts-and-crafts program). This approach is practical and easy for educators.
Unit 1, “Nature and I” shows to the children the great diversity of the world around them. They compare two “homes” (a usual house and a “house of nature”) on the pictures, and learn that around them there is air, water, plants, animals, soil, Sun (light and warmth), and all they are closely interrelated with each other and with the human. Then children study in details each environmental element: units “Water”, “Air”, “Sun”, “Rocks, Sand and Clay”, “Soil”, “Plants”, “Animals”. The unit “Forest” helps the children to use all the information they received to understand complex connections in an ecosystem. The final unit of the program is called “Human and Nature”. In which some problems of the relationships of nature and humankind, and the possible ways of their solution are shown on real examples. At the same time the teacher uses the material of all the previous units.