Educational Programs

  The Environmental Education Research Team of the University of Cyprus has developed and implemented the Environmental Education program "School Gardens: Think - Collaborate - Act". The creation of school garden is widely practiced initiative in many countries worldwide, with applications across all levels of education. The development and implementation of such a program within the context of Cypriot schools can have a positive impact on the cognitive, physical, and socio-emotional development of children, as supported by scientific research findings. Within this program, a series of activities has been designed to establish and maintain school gardens, which can be implemented by students in Pre-Primary and Primary Education.

 

The school gardens program can be enriched with a wide variety of optional activities that integrate content from subjects such as Science, Environmental Education, Health Education, and promote the objectives of the new curriculum concerning interdisciplinarity, active learning, the development of citizenship, and the connection between schools and communities. Each educator has the flexibility to select some or all of the optional activities from a thematic unit and combine them with activities from other thematic units, depending on their goals and the needs and skills of their students.

Below, the educational material (worksheets, presentations, images, etc.) designed as part of the educational program is presented and organized into three phases. Click on the lesson titles to download the files. Click here to download the Teacher’s Guide with lesson plans and other supporting material included in the program.