The main objective of the project was to raise the ecological and climate awareness of primary school students by introducing innovative, experimental methods of teaching natural sciences. The project aimed to ensure that students would no longer be passive recipients of textbook knowledge, but would become active investigators capable of critical thinking and of independently seeking solutions to environmental problems. The project partners also aimed to strengthen teachers' competences in modern, student-centred didactic approaches and to build a lasting network of cooperation between schools in Poland, Italy, Lithuania and Turkey. A further objective was to develop open educational resources — lesson plans, experiment protocols, e-booklets and digital applications — made freely available to the wider educational community across Europe.
We applied for this project because our school communities — in Poland, Italy, Lithuania and Turkey — were directly witnessing the consequences of environmental degradation and climate change in their own regions, from rising temperatures to more frequent natural disasters. The coordinating school operates in Silesia, a region with a heavy industrial legacy, where the impact of human activity on the environment is felt acutely by the local community. Surveys conducted among students and teachers across all four partner schools confirmed two specific needs. First, students showed clear gaps in their knowledge and awareness of the environment and climate change, with learning relying mainly on textbooks rather than first-hand investigation. Second, teachers lacked innovative, experimental teaching approaches and opportunities to exchange practices with European colleagues. We therefore applied to address both needs: engaging students aged 6–13 in hands-on environmental education, and giving teachers an international framework to develop new methods of teaching experimental natural sciences.