Name:__________________________

Information for the parents:

Your child may need help in reading and writing content as well as adult supervision when going outside to discover their urban settings. You are not asked to go on a trip outside the city. You can find plenty of nature activities within the city (a lot of them being close to home and free).

Main goal: This challenge has as a goal to increase opportunities for contact with urban nature and to appreciate and improve the quality of these interactions.

Competencies to be developed: Basic nature literacy, ability to understand urban nature, develop skills for interacting with nature and protecting/enhancing/restoring nature. Lastly it contains curricular content from the Living World in Science.

Why is this a good challenge? For children, increasing contact with nature means more leisure/learning time outside, and more involvement in interactive activities with nature.

We’ve learned new words like biodiversity and natural resources this year. These words have precise definitions. Yet, did you now, although we can look up the definition to nature, it’s a word that does not have the same personal meaning for everyone. It touches people both physically and psychologically so it’s often hard to describe on a personal level.

It’s often used to describe living and non-living elements that is not human nor human made. But remember, we humans are part of nature as well! We need to take time to think about how we interact with nature.

The love of nature, which is described as ‘biophilia’, is programmed into us. Nature gives us feelings of well-being and a “sense of wonder”. For some of us, these feelings makes us want to enter and stay in contact with nature and even protect it, while the absence of nature has the opposite effect. Unfortunately, this absence is growing in our contemporary, highly urbanized and technology-dominated societies. This problem is often described as ‘nature deficit disorder’. This is the problem that we will work with for our challenge.

The Framework

The challenge is outlined as follows. You will work on part 1 and 2 only this week.

· Part 1: Discovery

· Part 2: Emotional Attachment

· Part 3: Understanding

· Part 4: Action

Happy learning!

PART 1: DISCOVERY

Let’s discuss and discover some ideas together in order to start our challenge.

(a) What does urban mean?

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(b) What is urban nature?

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(c) What does biophilia mean?

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(d) What does nature mean to you on a personal level. To give a complete answer to this, think and answer the following: What is your definition of nature? Where do you physically go to “go into nature” (can be many places)? What are some things you do when you are “in nature”? How much time do you spend “in nature” (say in a week or month)? How do you feel during your time “in nature”?

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(e) Go on a discovery into urban nature. Find a few places (at least 2) you felt you were in contact with nature and fill in the table below. If you need to go outside, please make sure you talk to your parents and arrange your outing with them!

Urban setting

Connection to nature

What was I doing there?

How much time did I spend here?

Miss.Siva’s example:

My balcony

Miss.Siva’s example:

The sky, sunlight, clouds, plants I grow on my balcony

Miss.Siva’s example:

I was sitting on my mat, sipping on some tea and watching the clouds pass by. I took pictures of the sky here and there.

Miss.Siva’s example:

I spent 10 minutes doing this.

PART 2: EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENT

Now that we discovered some urban settings around us, let’s think back on these experiences. Use the table below to explain how you felt during these moments. After completing the table, you will then chose 1 that you felt emotionally attached to. Maybe you felt happy. Maybe you felt peaceful. Or maybe it made you curious or got you physically active. You need to explain why you are choosing it. This will become the biophilia that you will work with.

Urban setting & activity

How I felt

Miss.Siva’s example:

Cloud watching on my balcony

Miss.Siva’s example: It felt very peaceful sitting silently on my balcony. I liked the breeze blowing on my face and the sunlight warming my skin. I was curious to try this during a rainy day. I was thinking about all sorts of random things. Sometimes I thought about the different shapes of the clouds (wonder why they look like that). Other times, I was looking at the clouds and I was thinking about the rest of my week, about food, and happy thoughts about life.

The urban setting and activity I choose is: ____________________________________

The reason is because ___________________________________________________

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