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From the perspective of life-oriented education, with the deepening of children's learning and development research, children's learning path into nature has received unprecedented attention.
In our view, Taoism is nature, and it is one of the outlook on life that respects and worships nature as a teacher and is constructed in the process of children's growth.
"Nature" here has two meanings. One is to guide children to learn from nature. Second, education follows children's natural instinct, that is, the inherent law of children's development.
Of course, nature education is not a new idea. At present, many kindergartens are practicing nature education, but in practice, we are always confused. There is no shortage of nature around us. What is lacking is education. How to establish an effective connection among children, nature and education? How to find a cultural expression system with "natural taste" and "children's taste" in naturalistic education practice? This requires us to constantly open up, break through and rebuild in the concept of running the park, management mechanism, curriculum creation and environment creation.
All these, if concentrated on one thing, is curriculum construction.
After several years of practical exploration, our park has initially formed three main paths for the development of natural education courses:
Resources: Leading in "natural resources" and "human resources"
The idea of nature education is to let children return to the nature full of vigor and vitality, to the nature and growth rhythm of children, and to the real and complicated life.
Our education should conform to the rhythm, open the learning world without boundaries and walls, and create a comfortable and ecological educational environment and atmosphere.
Of course, nature, society and life are the richest and most vivid sources of children's learning and the inevitable direction of children's education.
Suhomlinski believes that nature is the "cradle of living thoughts" and "inexhaustible source-living water".
Teacher Chen Heqin put forward the theory of "nature and society are living teaching materials" in the 1940s, which shows how precious the educational value of nature is to children.
Therefore, in the choice of curriculum content, we should make use of regional resources, screen and select resources that are suitable for children's age characteristics, close to children's lives and have educational value, and organically integrate them into different curriculum implementation plans to formulate corresponding curriculum implementation plans.
From the location background, our garden is located in Changshu, a blessed land at the northern foot of Yushan Mountain. The plain climate with fertile soil, drought and little rain gave birth to the ecological environment with beautiful scenery and rich products in Zhong Ling.
Focusing on Yushan resources, guided by natural resources and human resources, we have created three major sections, namely "Mountain Treasures-Natural Exploration and Mystery Solving Course", "Mountain Treasures-Parent-Child Experience Life Course" and "Mountain Treasures and Landscape Art Course".
There are several directories under each course section. For example, there are self-cultivation classes, fabric classes and interesting classes under the course of "Natural Exploration and Solving Mysteries", reading classes, outing classes and catering classes under the course of "Parent-child Experience Life", and creative classes, acrobatics classes and architecture classes under the course of "Sympathetic Landscape Art".
Then, according to the fields involved in the course, it is further subdivided and decomposed to generate the theme of the sub-unit. For example, the cultivation route is subdivided into three subunits: picking mushrooms, looking for medicinal materials and looking for insects and birds, and the fabric route is subdivided into three subunits: clean cloth, happy cloth and useful cloth.
Combing and advancing layer by layer to ensure that a natural, suitable and always challenging channel is formed between Yushan resources and children's experiences.
We are deeply touched by the change of these resources from "one" to "many". The education of nature is silent, which brings children not only rich knowledge, expanded ability and spiritual pleasure ... The gifts that children get from the infiltration of nature far exceed our imagination and expectation. Because it gives children a holistic education of life integration, it conforms to the educational proposition of "giving children a complete perspective" and embodies a complete connotation.
Seminar: integrating the concept of "playing with nature" into environmental planning
Environment is the key for children to start learning, and it is also one of the curriculum contents of kindergartens.
In order to truly shape the environment into a course, we integrate children's elements and natural elements into the construction of function rooms, transform and design kindergartens from children's perspective, integrate the operating concept of "playing nature" into environmental planning, and condense the important concept map of "nature education" from children's perspective.
It is embodied in the following aspects: on the one hand, the indoor special function room is transformed, and special classrooms such as cloth workshop, lettering bar, herb garden and wood workshop are established indoors from the perspective of natural resources; On the other hand, the outdoor playground was transformed, and the west parking lot originally designed by the kindergarten was transformed into a children's playground, and a straw weaving workshop, a stone art workshop, a farming workshop and a mud fun workshop were established. The transformation of these characteristic workshops and function halls not only expands the space for children to learn, but also forms the space for children to grow up, showing unique cultural demands and expressing aesthetic significance.
In order to make children's learning obvious to all, we have taken the following reform measures in the management mechanism. The first is to break the traditional cyclical activity mode, that is, to flow into liner companies. According to the number of children that each baby can accommodate, on the basis of children's voluntary registration, classes are divided according to age, with one semester as a cycle and more in-depth learning in the form of "one workshop for one cycle".
Second, children choose the "menu" independently, create the designated proposition according to the "menu", and show their works after the end of a cycle. By accepting the evaluation of peers and parents, they can achieve the menu-like activities that children experience and develop in a cycle.
Third, linkage activities can break the limitations of workshops and learning materials, so that children can go out of their own workshops and solve problems together, instead of completing their creations in a single workshop.
The intervention of these management mechanisms aims to break the boundaries of disciplines, organize the course contents organically, and use various teaching means and methods to awaken children's experience, so that children can fully develop in the interaction with the surrounding environment.
In this way, in the ecological, natural and wild workshop game activities, children interact closely with the environment, materials, partners and teachers, experience the fun of exploration and gain the meaning of success.
Theme: Constructing Nature Education Curriculum with Cultural Resources as the Carrier
Children's learning is not independent, but based on the interaction of kindergarten, family and community, and constructs knowledge, emotion and personality in a specific cultural background.
Therefore, in the construction of natural education curriculum, we always have holographic content, that is, "all elements", "all directions" and "full participation", and usually launch a series of learning experience activities in the form of thematic clauses.
Relying on the tension of Yushan culture, the theme celebrations such as "Mountain God Ecological Festival" and "Mountain Fun Folk Festival" were founded. In these theme celebrations, educational contents in social, scientific, artistic, language, health and other fields are involved. The concept of "playing with nature" has penetrated into process management, teachers' growth, parents' participation and other aspects, effectively enriching the expression forms of kindergarten curriculum.
For example, combined with the "Mountain God Ecological Festival", the 24 solar terms were changed into children's classes, and on the day of the vernal equinox, the custom experience of "grass grows and warblers fly between vernal equinoxes" was carried out.
Children in small classes make spring ploughing plans through the "spring ploughing seminar", reclaim land with the help of teachers and nurses, spread hope and cultivate carefully.
Junior high school graduates initially felt the traditional activities such as collecting food in the field, collecting grass heads, selecting grass heads and making grass cakes.
Older children began to play the folk game "Beat Eggs" and experience the habit of drawing pictures to send spring cows.
In addition, we also led children to carry out activities such as "planting melons and beans before and after Grain Rain", "planting peanuts" and "digging lotus roots at the autumnal equinox", and seized the opportunity of nature education to integrate traditional farming culture into normal education, so that the wisdom condensed by Chinese ancestors in time could be passed on to children.
In this "bottom" game environment jointly constructed by teachers and children, children experience their hometown culture, identify with traditional culture and resonate with each other in the humanistic nourishment of "moistening things quietly".
In the course implementation in recent years, I deeply understand that all courses are based on the soil of my own campus. Although the course forms are different, the spirit in my bones is the same, that is, children's free, complete and high-quality development.
In the final analysis, the course of nature education is "returning to children, life, nature and traditional culture". What we educators should do is to respect the diversity of childhood and accept the growth of children.
(Author: Zong Ying is the director of Youwen Kindergarten in Changshu City, Jiangsu Province).
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