Conceptual and Methodological Guidelines & Hands on Activities

Conceptual Guidelines

The concept of “Childhood as a Knowledge-Builder” recognises children as active participants in their learning process. This approach aligns with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which emphasises children’s rights to express themselves and participate actively in their educational experiences.

• Active Participation: Children should be seen as competent individuals capable of contributing meaningfully to their learning and the community. They bring their unique perspectives, creativity, and ideas, which enrich the educational process.
• Agency and Expression: The CRC highlights the importance of respecting children’s rights to express their views freely in all matters affecting them. This includes designing educational settings that encourage self-expression, exploration, and decision-making.

Methodological Guidelines

For children aged 3–6, the following methods can help foster an environment where they can build knowledge effectively:

• Child-Centred Learning: Educational activities should be designed around children’s interests and developmental stages. This encourages curiosity and intrinsic motivation.
• Play-Based Learning: Play is a critical aspect of early childhood development. Through play, children explore, experiment, and understand the world around them.
• Scaffolding: Teachers and caregivers should provide support that helps children build on what they already know, guiding them towards new understandings.
• Collaborative Learning: Group activities promote social skills and the sharing of knowledge, allowing children to learn from each other. This also means that Inclusion is at the centre of collaborative learning.
• Philosophical Dialogue: The Didactics of the Community of Inquiry, set up in such a way as to suit children aged 3–6, shall frame didactic interventions that promote the role of children as knowledge-builders (e.g. promote the use of their questions in knowledge building).

Conceptual Guidelines

Incorporating digital technologies in early childhood education (ECE) involves balancing acquiring digital skills with developing critical, meta-cognitive, and social skills.

• Digital Literacy: Children should become familiar with digital technologies’ basic functions and potential uses. This includes understanding both the benefits and risks associated with digital tools. While it is not obligatory to use digital technology, it is important to provide a critical stance towards it, and crucial to refer to it so children can transfer critical thinking tools when dealing with digital technology.
• Transversal Skills: Critical thinking (meta-cognitive skills), problem-solving, and social interaction are essential for navigating the complexities of the digital world. All formats of collaborative reflection foster these, and in turn these reinforce collaborative reflection and joint action.

Methodological Guidelines

Educational strategies to achieve these objectives include:

• Integrated Learning Activities: Create activities that blend digital tools with traditional learning methods. For example, interactive storytelling can be used to combine listening to stories and digital animations.
• Critical Thinking Exercises: Encourage children to question and think critically about digital content, as well as to think about how they are thinking. Simple activities like comparing different sources of information or discussing the outcomes of digital games can be effective.
• Meta-Cognitive Skill Development: Foster self-awareness in learning processes. Activities that develop meta-cognitive skills often include reflecting on what was learned and how it was learned. Thus, the learning process is amplified. For example, errors will be considered an opportunity for a better understanding instead of merely the focus of correction.
• Safe and Responsible Use: Teach children about the safe use of digital technologies. This includes understanding privacy, recognising trustworthy content, and knowing screen time limits.
• Philosophical Dialogue: Create occasions for cooperative dialogic inquiry on digital tools and contents, emphasising questioning and the practice of asking and giving reasons for one’s claims.

Conceptual Guidelines

Promoting environmental sustainability in ECE requires a paradigm shift from stand-alone activities to a holistic approach where sustainability is embedded in everyday practices and learning experiences.

• Sustainability as a Core Value: Integrate the principles of environmental sustainability into the curriculum, making it a fundamental part of the learning experience, which means becoming aware of climate change challenges.
• Early Awareness: From a young age, foster a sense of responsibility and connection to the environment and every living being.

Methodological Guidelines

To foster sustainability in kindergartens, consider the following strategies:

• Nature-Based Learning: Incorporate outdoor activities and interactions with nature into daily routines. This can include gardening, nature walks, and observing wildlife.
• Sustainable Practices: Model and teach sustainable practices such as recycling, conserving water, and reducing waste. Engage children in activities that demonstrate these practices in action.
• Project-Based Learning: Develop projects that focus on environmental issues. For example, a project on recycling can involve sorting waste, understanding recycling processes, and creating art from recycled materials.
• Collaborative Community Efforts: Partner with local environmental organisations to provide hands-on learning experiences and connect children with broader community efforts to protect the environment.

These guidelines underscore the importance of a holistic, child-centred approach in early childhood education. By recognising that all children are active knowledge-builders, integrating digital and transversal skills, and embedding sustainability into the core of educational practices, we can prepare children for academic success and responsible citizenship in a complex world where inclusion is part of the ongoing attitude towards the world and others.

01 Childhood as Knowledge-Builder

02 Digital technologies and transversal skills

03 Environmental sustainability

Holistic, child-centred practice

Keep in mind that the recommendations in this guide are ideal goals to have as end-in-view goals and may not be ready to use abilities nor be achievable for all contexts. For instance a dialogue might be hard to establish with children who have no habits of dialogues with adults. Similarly, nature exploration will work differently for children who live in the countryside from those who live in cities. These methods align with the CRC’s emphasis on children’s rights and agency, ensuring they grow up in environments that respect and nurture best their full potential.

Integrating and incorporating these activities into various school events and everyday educational practice enhances their impact and helps children develop a critical stance on using digital and technological tools and a deeper understanding of how digital tools can be used to foster environmental awareness.

The EACH project aims to address three different topics – digital competence, climate change and sustainability, and transversal competences.

The project proposes various ways to address these three topics by adopting a child-centred pedagogical stance which fosters activities that work on key transversal competences (metacognitive, social and critical thinking skills) while simultaneously promoting environmental awareness.

The portfolio provides several activities which can be used and which can inspire further activities in the same pedagogical take. All kindergarten and school trips to the neighbourhood, or to the park, to the supermarket, to the swimming lesson in the city pool, to a museum, can integrate these activities. Notably, fostering a critical perspective on digital transformation doesn’t always require using digital technology in the classroom. Our activities provide alternative methods for schools that prefer to focus on environmental awareness and critical thinking without relying on digital tools.

Kindergarten, schools and other educational institutions often have a thematic focus within the school year or on specific occasions on each school year and it is ideal to connect these activities with that theme. In addition, national commemorations can be the subject matter of activities of the portfolio sample or can be inspired by them. The celebration of a historical event may be the source of reflection on a specific topic (e.g. freedom) and the overall guiding key idea for an activity.

P4C materials and discussion plans

Make sure to be properly trained in the specific methodologies applied and in supporting educational activities. Importantly, when you use the discussion plans which appear throughout the portfolio, remember that they are designed to help facilitate the dialogue and not to be used as a questionnaire in which all questions must be answered. If you’re uncertain about applying any practice, consult with a colleague who is also trained, so you can discuss and evaluate the approach together, in addition to using the evaluation tools provided in this project.

When you facilitate a collaborative class discussion (with P4C or other reflective thinking pedagogical methodology), you should aim to increase awareness about the subject matter and help children look for ways to think deeper about the issues. The activities we have developed are designed to raise awareness of climate-change challenges and to promote environmental sustainability. Environmental issues and sustainability are the foundation of all the planned activities, ensuring that each one reinforces these important themes.

The questions of the discussion plans are designed to help the facilitator make sure the focus is on looking for solutions for climate change challenges. Avoid telling children what they should think and search ways for children to help each other answer their own questions about the issue, and elaborate on comments verbalised in discussion. Implement the strategies for inclusion as to make sure everyone is part of the activity and feels they belong to the conversation. The duration of the dialogue in the activity does not have to be long and mostly engage children in a collaborative mindset of collaborative thinking.

In addition, past dialogues can be recalled while doing other activities in the classroom to show how reflective collaborative thinking makes a difference in practice. That is, if you engage in an activity in which you can pertinently recall an idea or conclusion that the children have reached in past activities and dialogues, you can install a new moment of dialogue to show that an idea from past discussion is helping to make decisions in a new activity.

The discussion plans are not to be used by forcing all the questions into the dialogue, and the questions used should be selected to deepen understanding of environmental issues, so use only those that seem appropriate and insightful to you depending on the way the children respond to the activities.

Asking for reason giving (from the child who makes a comment or from other children to help the child who made the comment), cultivating giving examples to build a common ground, looking for consequences of opinions, and following the argument where it leads as to show the logical thread of ideas fosters the philosophical tone of the dialogue. Also, encourage interaction between children themselves and show the importance of understanding others even when they disagree with other people’s statements.

The final section Guide for Child-Centred Dialogue provides concrete practical examples on how to implement interventions that foster the dialogues and the collaborative reflection.

Montessori methodology

Make sure to be properly trained in the specific methodologies applied and used to support educational activities.

Since the Montessori method involves children’s interests, all moments of activities proposed which have hands-on moments should be done as much as possible to provide autonomy and real-world skills, which they can use to amplify kindergarten activities. Avoid any type of evaluative comments as to enable children to establish their own individual learning process. Wherever possible, connect portfolio activities to existing practices and routines in the educational environment. This helps children experience continuity and strengthens the impact of already established pedagogical approaches.

Other dialogical and collaborative methodologies

Make sure to be properly trained in the specific methodologies applied and used to support educational activities.

Though project training sessions and implementation in schools were guided by Montessori methodology and P4C dialogical methodology, the activities can easily adopt other dialogical and collaborative methodologies, and those trained in these will know how to best use these materials. For example, in Portugal, those who use Movimento Escola Moderna (MEM) will find activities that fall under the pedagogical guidelines of MEM.

The amplitude of resources is infinite, and this listing aims to help kindergarteners focus and can be easily increased as schools introduce digital transformation.

1. Children’s questions. They are important resources for using and developing activities in the classroom because they help schools pass on important cognitive, social, and emotional lessons while guaranteeing the meaningfulness of the educational process for the children themselves.
2. Books, Paintings, Sculptures, and Music. Books are often used to promote activities in Kindergartens, and similar work can be elicited using other artistic expressions. Even though the use of music, for instance, can be more challenging, it can also provide kindergarten teachers with an opportunity to challenge themselves and share that experience with the children.
3. Websites of various kinds. Besides Google (e.g. Google Earth), YouTube, and other online platforms, there are numerous websites that can be a source of inspiration and knowledge for children’s activities.
   • Some are YouTube channels of kindergarten teachers and authors who read from their books.
   • Others are professional photographers’ and artists’ webpages, for example:
     • Portraits of Children Around the World and Where They Sleep
     • Dimitris Lambridis
     • Elliott Erwitt
     • Gabriele Galimberti: Toy Stories, which appeared in These Kids Want to Show You Their Favorite Toys
   • Others are from museums and libraries and iconic monuments around the world, for example:
     • A list of museums around the world to visit online
     • Virtual Travel for Architecture
   • Or sites dealing with the sustainability of websites, for example:
     • Examples of sustainable website designs

Incorporating digital tools into kindergarten education can open doors to creativity, exploration, and critical thinking, provided they are used thoughtfully and with clear learning goals. Unlike traditional resources, which serve as static sources of information, digital tools are dynamic by nature, enabling interaction, choice, and creativity. This key difference should be highlighted to children, helping them become mindful users of technology who can make thoughtful decisions about which tools are best suited for their learning and creative needs.

The goal is not only to familiarise young children with basic digital skills but also to develop their ability to think critically about digital technology. Through hands-on experience, children can learn both how to use digital tools and why they might choose to use them or not in different contexts. For example, while taking photos with a digital camera, children gain practical skills in using technology, while also considering what makes a meaningful image, how a camera “sees” compared to their own eyes, and how digital images differ from physical drawings or analog photographs.

In this approach, we focus on simple, accessible digital tools that allow children to explore without overwhelming them with complexity. Here are some of the tools and ideas for using them to enhance both learning and critical awareness of technology.

Digital Camera or Mobile Camera

Children can use a digital or mobile camera to capture moments, objects, or scenes from their environment. Working with disposable cameras and exploring how photographs were taken before digital technology helps children appreciate how media and communication have evolved. These activities not only introduce the basics of photography but also encourage children to think about perspective, framing, and selecting meaningful moments. By comparing digital photos with hand-drawn pictures, children gain an appreciation of different ways of capturing and interpreting reality, developing an early sense of critical media literacy.

Check out this introduction to photography for kindergarten for support

Voice Recorder

Voice recorders allow children to record their thoughts, stories, or the sounds around them, fostering self-expression and observational skills. Children can record themselves or their peers, listen back, and discuss what they hear, noticing differences in voice, tone, and storytelling styles. This practice not only builds language skills but also provides a critical view of audio technology as a way to document and interpret experiences.

Portable Printer

Portable printers can instantly transform digital photos into tangible prints, bridging the gap between digital and physical media. This tool can help children understand how digital images can be converted to a physical form, giving them a new way to share and engage with their surroundings. Seeing a digital image take physical shape helps them recognise the choices involved in using technology to communicate and preserve ideas.

Simple Mobile Apps for Creativity and Storytelling

Select mobile apps can offer rich opportunities for creativity, even with young children. Apps for drawing, stop-motion animation, or sound recording provide children with accessible ways to experiment and create. Stop-motion apps, for instance, allow children to animate their toys or drawings, teaching them about sequencing and narrative. Similarly, drawing apps can serve as digital canvases, allowing children to play with colour, texture, and design without needing art supplies.

Check out the link for further support

Each of these tools can be introduced in a way that emphasises intentional use and mindful engagement. Teachers can guide children in asking questions such as, “Why are we using a camera for this?” or “How is a recorded voice different from my real voice?” Over time, these experiences foster a balanced understanding of technology, teaching children not just how to use digital tools, but how to think critically about them and their impact.

In conclusion, digital tools in kindergarten serve a dual purpose: they equip children with basic technological skills while encouraging a reflective approach to technology. By introducing simple, hands-on digital tools like photography and voice recording, teachers can nurture a thoughtful perspective on technology use, empowering children to see themselves as informed, curious, and critical users of digital media as they grow up. One could even say that learning to use tools is secondary in media education in general and it is the way in which thinking and talking about technology (sometimes without needing to use technology) can provide important attitudes and behaviours to protect children and their families.

Introductory Activities

Activities often become more meaningful when they are connected to one another. If you use an activity over several sessions or combine different activities, help children recognise these connections. This can strengthen their engagement and highlight the relationships between environmental awareness, digital education, and collaborative critical thinking.

Feel free to use the activities as presented, combine elements from different activities, or adapt them to your own educational context and teaching style.

• Poster of the different sessions Create a poster that grows throughout the programme to help children register the continuity between activities. For example, you can use a caterpillar and use the shape of one segment for each session. At the end of each session, children can add a drawing or image representing what they have experienced. Revisiting the poster at the beginning of each session encourages reflection, supports children’s participation, and helps to create continuity across the activities.
• Take up a question put forward by the children to provide a sense of continuity between sessions and a coherent common thread throughout them. Start the sessions by reading a children’s book that embodies the essence of the project to collect pertinent questions, and with the help of the children select one of the questions to provide continuity and unity between the different activities.
• Review and revisit Review and revisit previous material and documentation deliberately by incorporating documentation from earlier meetings and sessions, enabling children to revisit prior observations and their own previous outputs (photos, drawings, collages and collected material) and extend shared reflection over time.

Check out our Good Practice Report for further guidance.

Browse the activity portfolio

Sometimes kindergarten teachers may feel they need suggestions to amplify their mode of promoting dialogue and discussions that encourage children’s opinions. It is good to have examples of different possible questions to use in collaborative dialogues because it helps to vary use of questions to prompt dialogue. This variation can increase children’s participation because it can intensify the pedagogical impact of questioning for developing children’s thinking.

These guiding questions were designed to help the Kindergarten teachers at the beginning and during the activities. They are to be selected and used when needed and not listed to be all used at every session. Also, we added a set of questions to guide dialogue to provide closure to the activity and reinforce metacognitive abilities.

It is important not to overdo dialogue moments and always work to maintain their pertinence and meaning regarding the activity. In addition, the questions are meant to support the educator and not to be answered in all dialogues in the classroom.

The following three sets of questions aim to foster focus and engagement with activities, highlight driving choices and foster reflection on practices and can also be used on their own whenever the kindergarten teacher sees fit.

Questions to promote the beginning of an activity

The dialogue at the beginning of an activity is also a mirror of the habits of dialogue in the classroom in general and helps the kindergarten to make an evaluation of the way dialogue is carried out in her classroom. If there are general questions it is good to write down in a public place for all children to see.

It is a way to return to reflection, at the end of the activity or to check them up as the activity unfolds to see if it answers questions initially put forward. Make sure to give enough time for children to respond as adults in general are faster and sometimes forget to give time for children to think and answer in their own words.

Questions to promote dialogue within an activity

These guiding questions can be used during activities, to reconnect the group when an activity extends over several days, or when children encounter an issue that offers valuable opportunities for learning and for further discussions.

Questions to promote self-reflective practices after an activity

Promoting dialogue at the end of an activity reinforces meta-cognitive skills, and helps children to verbalise what has happened during the activity. This is perhaps one of the most important moments of dialogue because it can reinforce transference of abilities and skills to other activities and other moments of children’s life.