Months of preparation and planning pay off: On 19 March, the local network in the district of Gifhorn of the nationwide "Stiftung Kinder forschen" (Children's Research Foundation) successfully held the specialist day for educational staff at daycare centres at BURG Knesebeck.
Under the motto "Certification, climate and digital detectives", Meike Schmidt, Network Coordinator of the BUTTING Academy, together with District Administrator Tobias Heilmann, welcomed numerous educational staff and got them in the mood for an exciting day.
Christoph Lammert, certification officer at the nationwide "Stiftung Kinder forschen" foundation, began by reporting on innovations in the certification process. This recognises daycare centres that are committed to the sustainable development of children through their educational work in the field of STEM education. Certification also requires participation in educational programmes in the local network or in online offers from the "Stiftung Kinder forschen".
After a brief exchange of experiences, the participants started the workshops. They were able to choose between two core topics.
The "Digital Detectives" workshop focussed on the role of data in the digital world. The participants worked out together how this world can be explained to the children in a playful way.
The difference between weather and climate was explained in the second workshop "Snow hare without snow? Understanding climate change, acting together". Special attention was paid to the importance of the topic for children: heatwaves, storms or heavy rain make playing outside impossible, for example. How these phenomena can be explained to children and how the physical stress caused by extreme weather events can be minimised was discussed in theory and practice by the participants.
In the final round, the participants expressed their enthusiasm and were looking forward to trying out what they had learnt with the children in their facilities. Meike Schmidt thanked everyone involved for their creative ideas and emphasised "that we as a network were only able to hold this symposium so successfully thanks to the sponsors in the network. I am sure that there will be more symposia in the coming years."
The "Stiftung Kinder forschen" network:
The local Gifhorn district network has been a network partner of the nationwide "Stiftung Kinder forschen" (Children's Research Foundation ) based in Berlin for 16 years.
The BUTTING Akademie gGmbH acts as network coordinator in this project and is supported by other partners (DRK Kreisverband Gifhorn, IAV Gifhorn, Volkbank-BraWo Stiftung and Sparkasse Celle-Gifhorn-Wolfsburg).
BUTTING - more than pipes - for a better quality of life
