Earth Day - Thematic Project

Nature surrounds us everywhere, and we must learn to live in harmony with it. The only way to live together with what surrounds us is love. It unites us through friendship and respect toward everything around us (people, animals, plants). From this project we learned to be good friends with nature, good ecologists, and to live in harmony with what surrounds us.

At Răsărit Kindergarten no. 2, Earth Day lasted three weeks, during which we took an imaginary journey together with children of all ages into the world of ecology, where they learned about pollution, recycling and how to become little ecologists. It was a special project that awakened the children's interest, and they were very receptive, absorbing like a sponge the information they received about the earth and what is happening to it. The conclusion of the project was unforgettable for the children, as they met the Nature Fairy.

In the first week the children received general information about the globe, painted the globe, and learned what is hidden in the depths of the earth. The Butterflies read pictures about environmental problems: pollution of water, earth and air, and deforestation, and tried to find solutions for protecting the environment. They played memory games with recyclable materials and got to know different materials by touch (tactile).

Elves listened with interest to The Story of the Plastic Bags and The Earth, the Living Planet, read pictures and played imagination games such as 'If I were planet Earth', made a team painting (collective work) 'Terra, everyone's home', and learned songs: 'Earth Day Every Day' and 'This old Earth' in English.

The Ladybugs learned about the component parts of a plant: root, stem, leaves, flowers, learned how to take care of them, planted, and learned the poem: 'Protect nature'

Protect nature, dear children,

Trees have souls and are alive,

and branch and bud and flower,

If you break them, the tree hurts too.

They learned a little song in English: 'Dig a little hole', and they modeled and painted 'The big, round Earth'.

In the second week all the groups focused on recycling and carried out various creative activities: pictures made from recycled materials, a little robot (the Elves), flowers from plastic bottles (the Ladybugs) and colorful little boxes from milk cartons (the Butterflies).

In the third week all the children took an imaginary journey across seas and oceans and learned about their suffering due to pollution. The Butterflies painted a variety of sea creatures suffering from pollution (they had plastic and other trash glued to their bellies), in order to understand how much harm water pollution can do to these creatures. Together with the children we went to the selective waste collection containers, learning how to separate plastic, glass, paper, metal and household waste. We also visited the fabric workshop near the kindergarten, where bags from recyclable cloth are made by mothers in financial difficulty, these bags providing them with a minimum income. The children learned about the process of making a reusable bag (how the material is cut, how the sewing machine is used, how it is personalized) and about the importance of using such a bag instead of plastic bags, which seriously pollute the environment. To reinforce what the children had learned, we ordered several bags with the inscription 'Earth Day Every Day', which parents can buy and use for shopping.

The project ended with a special day spent in Herăstrău Park. Here the children recalled what they had learned during the project by visiting the Aquarium in the park. The high point of the day was the meeting with the Nature Fairy, who did not speak and could be seen only by children. They searched for her in the park for a long time but did not find her until they sang to her with great love. Only in this way did they manage to bring her into their midst. The children, together with the teachers, made a special gift for the fairy - the elements of Life - water, air, earth and sun, and prepared two beautifully decorated little boxes for her. The fairy teaches us to put trash in the bin, shows us that it hurts her when she sees trash around her and that she suffers when the earth is sick because of pollution. She taught us to cherish and love everything nature has given us: the leaves, the trees, the flowers, the crystal-clear waters, the warm sun, the bright stars and the mysterious moon. The children followed her everywhere with great curiosity, until she reached her home and fell asleep.

It was a project that was very successful at Răsărit Kindergarten no. 2, and we hope that all the children were influenced in a positive way.