Aktywności

Hands-On Activities for Young Thinkers

We have prepared a collection of engaging activities designed to foster sustainability awareness, critical thinking, and digital literacy in young learners. These activities are intended as a flexible resource that teachers can adapt, customise, and make their own. Use them as inspiration, selecting the parts that best match the interests and developmental stages of your children.

Threads Dialogue 4 Environment 5 Digital 6

Feel free to explore the activities in any order that suits your class, though we recommend beginning with the introductory activities listed first to set a foundation. Each activity contains multiple tasks, but there’s no need to complete every one — choose the elements that resonate most with your classroom needs.

Additionally, we provide suggestions for further activities to modify or expand upon the tasks, including alternatives that allow for engaging learning without digital tools. We encourage you to experiment with these activities, adapting them to fit your own teaching style and the unique interests of your children.

Once you’ve tried some of these activities, consider creating your own based on the guiding principles presented earlier. This will allow you to tailor learning experiences even more closely to your classroom’s dynamics and goals.

The activities

Each activity is marked with the thread it leans on most: collaborative critical thinking, environmental awareness or digital education.

Dialogue

1 Web of Life – Building Our Community of Inquiry

This activity helps kindergarten children understand the interconnectedness of all living beings on Earth by building a collaborative physical structure. Through hands-on construction and discussion, the activity encourages teamwork, reflection, and an introduction to sustainability concepts. The aim is to build a sense of shared inquiry while also emphasising how every part of nature is connected as to promote environmental awareness. The way in which the yarn reveals connections is meant to illustrate how images are built out of ideas, which can capture better or worse the connections they trace.

Digital

2 Nature Detectives – Discovering Connections Through Photography

Introduce children to the basics of photography while encouraging them to explore their environment and observe how different parts of nature are connected. The children will learn how to use cameras or tablets as tools to discover and capture examples of interconnectedness in their kindergarten yard.

Digital

3 Exploring planet Earth

Introduce children to the concepts of geography, perspective, and spatial awareness and orientation skills through interactive exploration and creative tasks using Google Earth. Children get to know different environments on the planet – forests, deserts, oceans.

Environment

5 Wishing and Life

Help children reflect on which things are essential, and crucial for their well-being, and which things are choices.

Environment

6 My Favourite Tree

Helping children to become aware of the natural environment by focusing on the crucial role of trees in nature, and fostering the development of perception in photos.

Environment

7 Nature’s Symphony and Our Emotions – Change and Transformation

Helping children become aware of the natural environment as a whole by identifying how sound and emotions provide complementary information to visual elements.

Dialogue

8 Thinking about Change

This activity aims to nurture children’s understanding of change, freedom, and our connection to nature. By weaving together philosophical dialogue, hands-on exploration, and digital tools, children will explore how they and the world around them continually transform.

Environment

9 Exploring Small Animals in the Kindergarten Backyard

Introduce children to the small animals living in the kindergarten backyard, teaching them to observe, identify and understand these creatures through hands-on exploration using magnifying glasses, macro photography, books and apps.

Digital

10 Thinking about Waste and Creating Imaginary Environments

Teach children about how images can be manipulated and how easy it is to create fake photos. This activity will help them understand that not all images reflect reality and foster critical observation skills. This increases their sensitivity to environmental issues by making them alert to details that often go unnoticed. For example, social contradictions such as encouraging people to avoid using plastic bags while wrapping in plastic items to sell stuff cheaper and force buyers to buy more quantity.

Digital

11 Exploring Perspective in Photography through Role-Playing

Teach children about perspective in photography by having them imagine and capture the world from the viewpoint of different Animals and encourage taking up the perspective and Role-Playing of Animals.

Dialogue

12 Children Around the World

Foster awareness about social environments around the globe by exploring how children do similar things differently around the globe.

Digital

13 Thinking, Seeing and Reporting

Develop thoughtful and creative reporting skills by encouraging children to observe carefully, reflect on their experiences, and share their perspectives.

Dialogue

14 Live Art

Cultivate creative sensitivity and foster depth in the perception of art by exploring different forms of art and reflecting on the meaning of art and its connection to environmental issues.

Digital

15 News and How to Report

Help children recognise the importance of reliable information and develop a critical attitude towards how events and issues are reported.