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Sustainability - learning ecological gardening

Page 3/4: How to prepare activities with the children

How to prepare activities with the children

It is important to make thorough preparations for an activity day.

Coordinate with your colleagues and management before starting the session. If possible, get full understanding, support and cooperation from them. It is important that all caregivers read the topic introduction in order to be able to talk with the children about sustainability.

Get an overview: Read the material in the session:

  • The topic introduction
  • All the activity cards

Find your focus. This session contains different kinds of activities and cannot all be performed in one day. Therefore, you should read all the activity cards and choose one or two activities per day.
The activity cards have different purposes. Some of them are about making observations, research, interviews and discussions and some of them include practical gardening, where you and the children seed your own plants. There are many ways to pair the activity cards, and the order is not very important.

Here are some suggestions for preparations for an activity day:

  • Talk about what you already know about gardening. Have you any experience yourself?
  • Read all the activity cards and choose two cards from different categories (i.e. one discussion card and one practical gardening card, or one research activity and one practical gardening). Some of the activities require more preparation than others. Consider this when choosing.
  • Talk about what exactly should be prepared to perform the chosen activities:
    • Do you need to purchase anything?
    • Do you need to gather material for making plant beds? Could you make this into a joint activity with the kids?
    • Is the season right for the chosen activities? What circumstances do you need to consider before performing the activity?
    • How are the weather conditions?
    • What opportunities do you have in your area in regards to collecting food in nature? Do you know about any good places where you could go on a field trip with the children?
    • How is the pollution in your area?
  • Make a list of the required preparation tasks and divide them between you.
  • Tell the children what you are planning for them so they have a few days to look forward to it and think about it.

 

Each activity card below includes guidance and suggestions for activities.
Please note that some cards contain two different activities.
Open activity card about:

 

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