Preschool children experience nature in a different way than adults, so adults sometimes do not provide them with enough opportunities to fully use everything that nature has to offer. Children want to explore in nature, try things, feel, smell, taste, and not just observe.
In my thesis, I wanted to bring children closer to natural environments: forest, stream and meadow and encourage them to play and explore within them.
With a group of 16 children aged 4-6 years, I carried out a four-week project on the topic of acquiring natural science knowledge about the forest, stream and meadow in the preschool period. First, I conducted an individual interview with each child. The interview contained six questions. The questions referred to natural science knowledge about the ecosystems forest, stream and meadow ecosystem. With this, I found out how much prior natural science knowledge the children already have about these ecosystems. Then we carried out 7 different activities, in which the children in the natural environment gained natural science knowledge through direct experience. After the activity, I conducted the individual interviews with the same questions again. The results showed a difference in the child's science knowledge before and after the activities, the child's science knowledge about natural environments improved. I conclude that the activities I carried out with children in nature are a suitable way to acquire natural science knowledge in the preschool period and I note that it would be good to include it more often in the preschool practice.
|
