The new national Early Childhood Sustainable Citizenship Award will be formally launched by the Organisation Mondiale pour l’Education Préscolaire (OMEP-UK) in association with SchemaPlay at the Schema Play Annual Conference in Walsall on 1 May.
The scheme is designed to promote the idea of humankind as living interdependently with the natural world by encouraging children to learn about how they respect and care for each other and the wider environment.
Children taking part in the award will receive a sustainable citizenship ‘passport’ summarising the provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the importance of living sustainably.
The passport also provides discounted entry to wildlife conservation parks and other community services.
Children can collect up to 15 award stickers for their passports at Bronze, Silver and Gold levels. These can be attained by working at nursery or at home to complete educational activities ranging from the identification of three wild birds and the recycling of waste materials to recognition of cultural and linguistic diversity.
All the activities are based around five educational areas which are designed to broadly address the UN Sustainable Development Goals:
- social-cultural education
- economics education
- environmental education
- emergent literacy education
- emergent numeracy education
Participating settings will receive a range of resources to support children’s work including recommendations for related picture books or activities, but must have at least 60 per cent of parents engaging in the scheme before they can sign up.
SchemaPlay is currently recruiting trainers who wish to be accredited to support early years settings applying for the award.
The organisation will run training for trainers courses that involve five days of face-to-face support, ten weeks of online support and all the resources required to support settings in their implementation of the scheme.
- For more information contact admin@schemaplay.com
