I totally agree on that. I think that we need to spend as much time as possible in nature, that's one of my fundaments when it comes to children-in-learning -situation. We have to start with what compiles us to understand why we even shall learn something that's new to us. Nature has it all, you have math.......right in front of you and there you can also see it at work...when the abstract thinking isn't fully developed you need to work with visual images to make it concrete and meaningfull.
The other aspect: that we know more about nature in other regions of the world than our nearest surrounding isn't bad. I mean everything you learn about our globe is positive from my point of view, but that small child should probably start with exploring the nearby suroundings as it's very abstract when they can't see, touch...the things that are on the table.
It also goes for the adult I guess. And it's a bit strange that we know more about space in a cosmological aspect than we know about our own planet. That's that main frame of the sleping project I'm a part of called "Space on Earth". It was started back in 2001 or something but it never made it any longer than on a conceptual level.
mr V
andreas you must be a very good teacher for your kids!
you remind me for some reasons my beloved elementary school teacher. he was an old wise man (well you're not old
) who teached us to love nature and to respect it.
he brought us to plant little trees once or twice a year, and to have long walks into the fields, children are not stupid, but they are really influenceable, and it's good to have someone who teaches you the importance of what's around you....you will never become direspectful towards nature.
he teached us to recognize the trees by their leaves, and their leaves by their shape, so in the meanwhile he teached us math and geometry...
i have a beautiful memory of him and it was a shock when he died years ago....
i still think he was one of best teachers i had in 13 years of school.
i had the fortune to be born in the countryside, then moved to the city...
i still miss living in nature, but sometimes life drives you on a way you didn't want to follow. i was young, and my parents decided to move, so i could do anything but follow them.
it's was so sad at the beginning, even if we moved into a quite green city, i had a park in front of my home, and i could see the trees from my window. but it wasn't the same.
i could not see anymore flat fields from here to the horizon, could not smell the parfum of nature, could not hear the rustling of the leaves.
and when you're a child everything is full of adventure and mistery, and everything needs to be known and discovered. so every step you do is a little great adventure of its own, an adventure into an unknown world, where each bush becomes a forest, each flower a complex universe....
oh how much i miss those times...
you made me remember all this.
life was simpler and waaaay more beautiful...
SHIT :°°°)