engleski

Ocean Literacy in the kindergarten – example of good practice from Croatia

We are living in the era of rapid environmental changes and nowadays marine education is probably more important than ever. Stronger collaboration between scientific and preschool organizations is necessary to provide knowledge transfer and raise interest and awareness of the preschool children for the ocean issues. The main aim of our action was to include preschool children in the creation of the educational picture book. Our preschool group consisted of 20 children, three to six years old. The action consisted of two types of activities i) educational activities - two interactive workshops led by scientists and an educational visit to the Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries ; ii) creative activities - creative workshop led by kindergarten teachers. After educational activities, the group was encouraged to creatively express their view of the learned. Kids were illustrating some of the main ocean issues such as pollution, global warming, new species and nursery ground protection. Furthermore, they illustrated how a healthy ocean looks like and what we can do to reduce our negative effects on the planet. We wrote rhyming songs and scientific text adjusted for the children that together with kids illustrations were included in the educational picture book. The online version of picture book was presented during the Science Festival 2021 and also printed in 700 copies. Online version was free to download while hardcopy was distributed in around 80 kindergarten groups and 10 libraries. We hope that through this picture book our young readers will realize the importance of the ocean.

Ocean Literacy ; preschools ; educational picture book

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