Earth Stories

‘Earth Stories’ is a positive powerful sustainability project for primary children. Writing stories about their experiences in their own local environment beyond the doom and gloom and in contrast to “popular” topics like “plastic pollution” or “melting ice caps” where children are confronted with problems beyond their understanding and control, this project focused on their strength and honouring the stages of their development, supporting children’s biological tendency to bind with the natural world. The activities in this project focused on healthier ways to foster environmentally aware, empowered students, using our natural environment for curriculum learning, enhancing teacher and child creativity, initiative and competence. On a national level the project ’Earth Stories’ covered at least 20 of the 58 core goals of primary education in the Netherlands enabling cross curricular learning. It covered all larger learning areas: languages, mathematics, orientation on yourself and the world, artistic orientation and physical education. Outdoor learning also promoted the need for sport and physical activity according to the Lisbon treaty, developing the European dimension in sport. We focused on place-based education for sustainability to provide a setting where we invited the children to love the world before we ask them to save it. The international collaborative activities helped to prevent children simply privileging nature in their place, but prompted them also to value the natural environment of their project partners, through activities like writing about local animals, building dens, following streams and outdoor cooking. We aimed to provide settings for children to bind with the natural world, but by connecting to peers in Europe who are doing the same, to enjoy it and care for it together. This supported Europe's need for a more cohesive and inclusive society, enhance intercultural understanding and a sense of belonging to a community.Through sharing our love for your environment and being interested in the environment of the other, through understanding our place to better understand the other, culturally, and ecologically, this project provided a setting to contribute to environmentally aware and empowered students because they will have positive connections to the world not just their own environment.