In this beautiful season of bright spring, how can you have the heart to keep your child indoors? It is better to go to the most beautiful classroom in nature and give children the most meaningful education.
Richard Louv, a famous American writer, used the word' natural absence' in The Last Child in the Forest to describe the fact that children in modern society lack contact with nature.
Many medical experts believe that living in the natural environment is an important reason for childhood obesity, attention disorder and depression. In this context, a kind of forest education that takes the forest as the classroom and lets children return to nature has gradually attracted people's attention. In forest kindergarten, children climb trees, play with fire and make snowmen in nature ... Can you say that nature education is not important?
Today, let's take a look at how countries around the world educate their children about nature. Forest kindergarten originated in Denmark in 1950s and became popular in Germany. At present, there are more than 1500 forest kindergartens all over Germany, and they have been extended to areas outside Europe. Japan (100 schools) and South Korea are booming, and the United States and Canada have also begun to pilot field kindergartens.
Forest kindergartens usually have no classrooms, so that children can return to nature. Children can climb trees and play with fire. Even on snowy days, children play outdoors. Children learn not indirectly through books, but through direct contact with nature. Children's observation will naturally become keen, and the motivation to learn and explore will continue.
Nature is the classroom in the forest kindergarten, the forest is the classroom, nature is the teacher, and the logs and stones in the forest are the desks and chairs. Teachers only care and guide, and children are the masters of learning, developing their body and mind in play.
Pankgrafen Forest Kindergarten in cairol has 265,438+0 children almost every day all year round. They come to the classroom to study every morning, rain or shine. In winter, the north wind is biting, and the temperature almost drops below zero. In the face of tourists' worries, Southten Inek, director of the park, smiled: "This is nothing at all, and' rain or shine' is not just an expression. Even if it is MINUS 28 degrees Celsius, we will stay outdoors. The child has never caught a cold. "
On extremely cold days, children and teachers will get into camping tents or small wooden classrooms for a while. But Leijneck says most of the time is outdoor activities.
Climbing trees is children's favorite activity, and neither teachers nor parents protect it. No tree climbing device will be designed in kindergartens or children's activity places. There are all kinds of trees here, tall, short, big and small, and there is always one that suits you. Children climb trees, and teachers and parents don't give them any help, just help them down. Without protection, children know how to protect themselves better. Only once did the child fall down, because the child's father was down there to protect him. The child knows that his father will catch him when he falls.
Teachers don't interfere, children learn by themselves. In most cases, teachers and parents do not interfere with children's actions, just to ensure that children are within their sight. Children will be able to use their imagination more, weigh the dangers themselves, learn by themselves, learn from each other, learn from experience and learn from failure.
It is hard to imagine that a group of children aged 3-6 built a snow shelter without any help from adults. When the fire is about to go out, they will light their own bonfires and add wood. Children here rarely touch commercial toys, but take local materials and look for toys in the forest. Unlike commercial toys, nature's toys are endowed with specific meanings. Branches, dirt and insects found in the forest can give full play to children's imagination and language description ability.
Playing more will lead to better study and stronger ability in the future. Playing outdoors for a long time has been proved to be very beneficial to children's balance, dexterity, physical coordination, tactile sensitivity and depth perception. Most children in forest kindergartens will improve their reading, writing, mathematics, social interaction and so on after entering primary school. These children are usually more confident and extroverted.
Listen to stories more attentively. Every afternoon, the forest school will spend some time listening to stories or singing. These usually crazy children are very focused at this time, especially when listening to stories, and singing together is not chaotic. After reading these, do you want to ask: must nature education be done in the forest?
In fact, "forest" is just a synonym for nature, and forest education is a part of nature education. Forest kindergartens can be forests, farms, beaches or parks. What we need to learn more from is the spirit of German nature and forest education. With the natural game teaching method as a tool, combined with our own conditions and environment, we create our own natural education system.
What abilities can nature education improve? A prominent feature of forest kindergarten is the emphasis on playing with toys, which can be found in nature, not bought. Despite these differences, forest kindergartens still serve the same basic purpose: caring, * * * and educating children.
After years of follow-up study, the researchers found that children who have received forest education are more prominent in self-confidence, attention, enthusiasm for learning, language ability, communication ability, behavior habits, active thinking and physical fitness than children who have not received forest education. In addition, forest education also has a good therapeutic effect on children with autism, anxiety and other psychological diseases.
How do countries educate children about nature? According to the survey, there are more than 1500 forest kindergartens in Germany, and they are gradually expanding to developed countries such as Britain, America and Japan. There are more than 1 000 German-style forest kindergartens in Japan, and the number of places is in short supply. Nature education is recognized by more and more parents, and nature education in Japan is also developing at an unprecedented pace.
In Korea, forest kindergartens are also growing rapidly and gradually forming a system. Japan: Special activities and study tours Japanese education attaches great importance to social practice. They have carried out natural experience education very early, accumulated a lot of experience and achieved good results, which also has some enlightenment to the current curriculum reform in China.
Every school in Japan has its own special activities, which account for a large proportion in the curriculum. Its contents and forms are varied, including sacrificial activities, cultural activities, safe sports activities to promote physical and mental health, tourism activities close to nature and culture to enhance public morality, group accommodation activities, voluntary activities and so on.
Through these activities, we can develop people's personality, cultivate rich personality, make students adapt to class and school life, deepen students' understanding as collective or social members, enhance their sense of responsibility and establish good interpersonal relationships.
For example, the school has a special life classroom, which provides students with many opportunities and places to exercise their self-reliance, autonomy and sense of responsibility. Students can practice cutting vegetables, lighting gas stoves and cooking here. Hiking is also a special activity, which is carried out every year from the first grade of primary school to cultivate children's experience and endurance for "long-distance travel"
Japanese education especially emphasizes natural experience learning, so that children can get close to and understand nature from an early age and grow up happily and easily in natural experience. "Study tour" is one of the main contents that are very distinctive and popular among students in special activities. Since the implementation of 1960, the implementation rate of senior high school is 94. 1%, junior high school is 97.0%, and primary school is 93.6% (data is 1998). The number of travel days increases with the growth of grades, which is roughly 2-6 days.
The purpose is to let students increase their knowledge in different living environments and experiences, experience collective life while approaching nature and culture, and "cultivate broad-minded people". For example, the study tour of a junior high school in Chiyoichi, Chiba Prefecture is set in a mountainous area in Nagano Prefecture. The starting and meeting place is not in the school, but at the destination station, just to train students to check the timetable and route themselves. Accommodation is not concentrated in hotels, but in farmhouses.
On the first day, I helped the farmers who stayed to do farm work; Walking in the valley the next day, communicating with farmers and organizing activities in groups. On the third day, I walked along the river, went to the temple to meditate and visited the museum. After three days of study tour, the students experienced things that they could not experience at ordinary times and left a deep impression.
Through these natural learning and collective life, children not only increase their knowledge, but also learn a lot of knowledge that books can't learn, such as cooperation with classmates, interpersonal communication, survival ability and so on. Experience and happiness in natural learning are often the most unforgettable things in children's school life.
America: Looking at what children are doing on the farm, talking about American education methods, many people can think of the famous STEAM literacy education, K- 12 basic education, and even the relatively novel home-school home-school education. However, there is an educational method that has been implemented in the United States for more than 100 years, and it is the largest informal education project in the United States-4-hour education. However, few people in China know this kind of education.
"4H" in 4H education is the abbreviation of hand, head, health and heart. As the name implies, this kind of education emphasizes the harmonious development of "hand, brain, body and mind". Four-hour education encourages children to acquire knowledge and master skills from nature and daily life, thus establishing a positive philosophy of life. In the four-hour education specially designed for American farm children, American children participate in four-hour activities differently according to their age or grade.
Usually, kindergarten children learn to collect leftover breakfast and feed it to pigs. They observe the nutrient cycle. First-grade children do odd jobs on farms, feeding chickens, herding sheep or watching animals; Second-grade children learn to grow crops, including personally threshing and cultivating fields when harvesting; In the third grade, they learn to cook and build houses; Fourth-grade children adopt cows;
The fifth grade children mainly study geography, and describe the farm terrain through painting, watercolor and clay sculpture; Children in the sixth grade began to learn dairy products. The focus is on hands-on and improving perception. Grade 7: Explore the outside world. From the seventh grade, students began to broaden their familiar fields through exploration-exploring the world outside Hawthorne Valley to varying degrees.
Children are constantly learning to understand the world. The landscape has not changed in the process of reciprocating rise, but the children's perspective and cognitive style are brand-new.
Nature education in Britain, South Korea and Vietnam is in Britain. For forest kindergarten, it doesn't mean that all the teaching activities of kindergarten are carried out in outdoor venues, such as reading, telling stories, singing and eating indoors. South Korea's forest coverage rate is 63%, which is jointly managed by the state, local governments and individuals. Therefore, forest kindergartens in South Korea are roughly divided into state-owned forest kindergartens and private forest kindergartens operated by local autonomous organizations. Most of these natural rest forests have perfect experience and educational facilities, such as "forest house" built of logs, cultural center, camping ground, wild botanical garden, observation deck, sightseeing road, picnic area and so on.
At the same time, since 2008, the Korean Ministry of Forestry has been carrying out children's forest experience projects in rest forests and botanical gardens all over the country. Forest education is carried out in cooperation with local kindergartens every week or month, and children are regularly given forest education for two to three days. More than a dozen forest instructors with professional ecological knowledge will go deep into kindergartens to give guidance. The kindergarten affiliated to Busan National University is the first kindergarten in Korea to educate children on forest ecology.
In Vietnam, a kindergarten named "Farming Kindergarten" has attracted the attention of people all over the world. Because its architectural design is very unique, it emphasizes the close relationship between man and nature. Overlooking this "farm kindergarten" from the air, I saw a three-ring knot on a large green space, and vegetation grew in these ups and downs.
There is a lawn on the roof. After treatment, children can grow plants and vegetables on it, and experience the fun of harvesting while playing here. All indoor activity spaces and related facilities in the kindergarten are located under the roof. It is said that this kindergarten can accommodate about 500 children, all from ordinary families, whose parents are workers working in a nearby shoe factory.
While kindergartens in many places urge children to read and write as soon as possible, forest kindergartens in Germany and other countries, the birthplace of kindergartens, are embarking on the road of returning to and embracing nature. ......