‘Earth Stories’ is a positive powerful sustainability project for primary children. Writing stories about their experiences in their own local environment beyond the doom and gloom and in contrast to “popular” topics like “plastic pollution” or “melting ice caps” where children are confronted with problems beyond their understanding and control, this project focuses on their strength and honouring the stages of their development, supporting children’s biological tendency to bind with the natural world. The activities in this project will focus on healthier ways to foster environmentally aware, empowered students, using our natural environment for curriculum learning, enhancing teacher and child creativity, initiative and competence. On a national level the project ’Earth Stories’ covers at least 20 of the 58 core goals of primary education in the Netherlands enabling cross curricular learning. It covers all larger learning areas: languages, mathematics, orientation on yourself and the world, artistic orientation and physical education. Outdoor learning also promotes the need for sport and physical activity according to the Lisbon treaty, developing the European dimension in sport. We will focus on place-based education for sustainability to provide a setting where we invite children to love the world before we ask them to save it. The international collaborative activities will help to prevent children simply privileging nature in their place, but will prompt them also to value the natural environment of their project partners, through activities like writing about local animals, building dens, following streams and outdoor cooking. We aim to provide settings for children to bind with the natural world, but by connecting to peers in Europe who are doing the same, to enjoy it and care for it together. This will support Europe's need for a more cohesive and inclusive society, enhance intercultural understanding and a sense of belonging to a community. This project will help newly arrived immigrants to learn about their new environment and share their own local knowledge, to learn and to care for it with their peers. Two of the Project partners are teachers of the English language and this project will be part of their content language integrated learning methodology (CLIL). They will assist the other partners with language development material to develop students’ foreign language skills simultaneously with enhancing their knowledge in aspects of local heritage and developing their cultural awareness and multicultural understanding. One Project partner is specialised in cultural heritage and one partner specializes in STEM projects and ICT. One partner is specialised in education for sustainability and will provide a setting for ongoing research with Plymouth University in the United Kingdom during the project. We will use multimodal materials such as stories, digital tools, songs, movies, games and constructions to arouse the students’ interest, in a ‘game based and outdoor’ teaching environment. Children will organise events in the community to share their learning experiences after visiting a project partner. Displays about these 4 European countries will be visible in schools, the community and online. They will be updated by the children throughout the project. The funding will enable a total of 112 mobilities, enabling 75 of the 94 children involved in the project to travel. All children will be included in the online and outdoor activities. The children that are not traveling will play an important part in hosting the events in their country. Through sharing our love for your environment and being interested in the environment of the other, through understanding our place to better understand the other, culturally, and ecologically, this project will provide a setting to contribute to environmentally aware and empowered students because they will have positive connections to the world not just their own environment. link to a video in preparing this project. https://vimeo.com/260940829
‘Earth Stories’ is a positive powerful sustainability project for primary children. Writing stories about their experiences in their own local environment beyond the doom and gloom and in contrast to “popular” topics like “plastic pollution” or “melting ice caps” where children are confronted with problems beyond their understanding and control, this project focused on their strength and honouring the stages of their development, supporting children’s biological tendency to bind with the natural world. The activities in this project focused on healthier ways to foster environmentally aware, empowered students, using our natural environment for curriculum learning, enhancing teacher and child creativity, initiative and competence. On a national level the project ’Earth Stories’ covered at least 20 of the 58 core goals of primary education in the Netherlands enabling cross curricular learning. It covered all larger learning areas: languages, mathematics, orientation on yourself and the world, artistic orientation and physical education. Outdoor learning also promoted the need for sport and physical activity according to the Lisbon treaty, developing the European dimension in sport. We focused on place-based education for sustainability to provide a setting where we invited the children to love the world before we ask them to save it. The international collaborative activities helped to prevent children simply privileging nature in their place, but prompted them also to value the natural environment of their project partners, through activities like writing about local animals, building dens, following streams and outdoor cooking. We aimed to provide settings for children to bind with the natural world, but by connecting to peers in Europe who are doing the same, to enjoy it and care for it together. This supported Europe's need for a more cohesive and inclusive society, enhance intercultural understanding and a sense of belonging to a community. Through sharing our love for your environment and being interested in the environment of the other, through understanding our place to better understand the other, culturally, and ecologically, this project provided a setting to contribute to environmentally aware and empowered students because they will have positive connections to the world not just their own environment.