Estonia is a land of hiking and we start to train this great habit in early childhood.
In Aruküla kindergarten we have long tradition of hiking twice in a year -autumn hike and spring hike. Last year we had lovely Erasmus experience – hiking with parents, this year we found another exciting way to connect two great pedagogical approaches – outdoor education and adventure education.
Purpose of our hike on 21 May for 4-5 year old pupils was first of all to investigate life forms in water bodies and learn social skills through adventure centered experiences.
On our 3,4 km hike we had several critical moments to solve problems like what to do when your feet are wet, how to build a bridge over the stream, how to work all together as a team, how to share your last lunch sandwich with your team-mates, what was a cause for the death of a wild boar who`s skeleton we found…
As adventure education is an active process, on that great day we learned a lot about nature and life at outdoor through adventures.