2nd PROJECT 2008/2009
One autumn day, strange noises were coming from our playground. A mysterious blue creature appeared briefly and then vanished. It had big eyes, messy hair and large ears. What could it be? It didn’t fly, it did not walk but it moved. Was it an animal? Was it a human being? It didn’t seemed as coming from this planet. Where did it come from?
The next day, we had the opportunity to meet this strange being; Traja came for a visit. It was gentle and lovely, little shy space creature. She travelled on the rainbow made of starry dust. She came from the planet M42, located in the Orion nebula, with a special mission. Her planet was about to be destructed and she was looking for solutions by discovering our planet Earth and human wisdom and knowledge. After completing all the tasks and challenges that the children had been solving together with educators and parents throughout the year, Traja finally made it back to her planet, carrying all the important things she needed to save her planet.
Research areas: Natural science, ecology, sustainable development, Space and Ljubljana’s Marches, space – in terms of globalisation, Space and nature, social curriculum in relation to other curricular fields: language, society, movement, art, mathematics.
After focusing mostly on social science in the first project, we balanced the curricula by emphasising the natural sciences this year. Since the years 2008 and 2009 were International years of Planet Earth and Astronomy, which also focused on the protection of wetlands, our project goal aligned with the Convention on Wetlands. We put a lot of effort into fostering love, respect and active attitude toward the protection of nature. We concentrated on learning about fundamental concepts of biology, ecology, understanding biotypes and ecosystems, as well as on peaceful coexistence between people and nature, and the necessity of immediately addressing ecological problems that are becoming both global and even cosmic in scope. We guided the children toward systematic scientific data collection and sorting, research, resource exploration, documentation and cataloguing. Achieving these goals and tasks was a facilitated by our kindergarten’s location next to Ljubljana’s Marches, which offers many opportunities for field research.
