Sustainability if taught in early childhood can help children learn about the necessity of taking care of the environment. Therefore, sustainability must be incorporated as one of the significant parts of the curriculum. This blog will share a few ways that can be practised at childcare centres.

Why teach sustainability to children?

As stated by UNESCO, with a world population of 7 billion people and limited natural resources, we, as individuals and societies, must learn to live and survive together sustainably. There’s an immediate requirement of our understanding that what we do today will have some implications on the lives of people and the planet in the future. Therefore, education for sustainable development (ESD) will empower people and the young guns of tomorrow to change the way they think and work towards a sustainable future.

How to practice sustainability at childcare centres? 

Including activities related to gardening, worm farms, composting and providing a more natural environment to children engage them the most. However, these are just a few ones; there can be many such ways to teach sustainability in childcare.

Let’s list out a few of the ways for children to engage in sustainability:

• For preschoolers, educators can choose an activity with ‘Energy Savers’, under which they will be responsible for noticing fans, lights, and other appliances left on when not in use. Likewise, ‘Water Savers’ activity can also be conducted for students actively involved in noticing taps left on and other wastage of water.
• Within childcare, educators can encourage children to participate in the recycling programs or include them in developing new strategies for recycling materials.
• Engaging the students in class discussions about sustainable practices, which might include topics such as dealing with food and scraps left over after the meal times, how and what to do when a garbage bin is full, etc.
• For older children, environmental issues must be discussed, which may include the daily updates of pollution levels and air quality in the weather reports. This can be addressed during morning group time, or a chart can be maintained to record these findings so that the children can see it within their classroom.

Kids & Co is one such child care centres in Melbourne, where we provide the safest and most favourable environment for a child to learn all about sustainability and lay down a strong foundation for their physical, mental, and emotional growth.