Ecoliteracy

How do children (and adults) learn to appreciate and care for the natural world?

I’m working on a project supporting educators to use the principles and practices from Reggio Emilia to develop children’s ecoliteracy: learning IN, ABOUT, FROM and FOR the environment.

In one of the centres, the educators do not see children engaging in the garden areas. Now, most of the gardens are in raised beds skirted by limestone walls, so maybe they are not as accessible. But the children do not seem interested in the plants in the beds at ground level either. Now, there is also not much in the beds: one rosemary bush, a few small flat leaved plants and wood chips.

The educators set up all kinds of activities with leaves and flowers – putting them in water, ice, goop, clay, containers.

After some experiments with watercolour, they had the children drop dye from pipettes onto the leaves. We captured the leaves’ ‘painting’ on paper under the leaves. It seemed like a great idea. But it captured interest for 5 minutes.

Were the children bored with nature?

I did a little reading and found some research indicating that children need adults to introduce them to plants. Learning blossoms: Caregiver-infant interactions in an outdoor garden setting by Valentina Fantasia, Linda S. Oña, Chelsea Wright, Annie E. Wertz https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0163638321000758

“Infants may possess a behavioural avoidance strategy that would protect them from plant dangers by avoiding contact with plants until there is a social signal that a particular plant is safe. Accordingly, recent laboratory research has shown that infants are initially reluctant to touch plants and touch them less frequently than manmade artefacts and naturally occurring entities like shells and stones (e.g., Elsner & Wertz, 2019; Wertz & Wynn, 2014b; Włodarczyk et al., 2018)”.

The researchers suggest that adults sit in the garden and invite curiosity and wonder.

• Simple touch – Using one or more fingers or the palm of the hand to touch any part of the selected plant             
• Pinching – Pressing one or more fingers together on the selected plant, with no additional movement             
• Picking up/off – Using one or two hands to pick off pieces either directly from the selected plant or off the ground (e.g., one of its flowers or leaves that had fallen on the ground)             
• Smell direct – Smelling the selected plant directly without first holding or picking a piece of it up.
• Smell other – Smelling a piece of selected plant in educator’s hand or smelling plant residue on an educator’s hand or finger(s) when, for example, they have rubbed it between their palms or fingers             
• Smell self – Smelling a piece of selected plant in own hand or smelling plant residue on own hand.
• Smell child – Educator smelling a piece of a plant in the child’s hand

What do you think? How do you engage children with nature?