Mateřská škola Pionýrů 1344, Sokolov

Rescue Town

Combining creativity, cooperation, and responsibility towards nature in a preschool environment

Project goal

The Rescue Town project combines environmental education with creative activities across the entire preschool. It emphasizes:

• teaching children not to waste food and to limit the use of plastics,
• developing ecological thinking through games, stories, and practical activities,
• interclass cooperation and support for a sense of belonging,
• guiding children toward a natural responsibility for the environment.

Course and implementation

Class morning program

Each kindergarten class spends the morning working on its own part of the "town":

• children sort waste, create things from recycled materials and learn about the principles of recycling and sustainability,
• the activities are supplemented by themed fairy tales, stories, games and physical activities,
• each class prepares art and construction creations from plastic and natural materials, which are then assembled together.

Joint meeting in the school garden

At 10:00 a.m., all classes will meet in the kindergarten garden and together assemble the "Rescue Town" from the collected creations.

• The town is located on the school compost heap, where children can continue to observe it in the following days and weeks – what happens to the materials, what decomposes and what remains.
• The activity thus combines art, ecology, and curious observation of changes in nature.

Awards

After building the town, each class will receive a "Helper of the Planet" diploma, which will be ceremoniously displayed in the cloakrooms as a symbol of recognition and motivation for the children and their parents.

Involvement of parents and the community

The project has a community dimension:

• Parents are invited via an information leaflet to bring clean plastic packaging and lids to the kindergarten, which are used as materials for creative activities.
• Thought-provoking stories are regularly posted on the notice board next to the menu so that parents can read them and discuss them with their children at home.

Long-term activities – audit and stories

Weekly waste audit

• In cooperation with the school kitchen, a bucket is prepared every day with leftover fruit and vegetables from snacks.
• The children take these leftovers to the compost and learn to observe the amount of waste produced.
• Every Friday, there is a class evaluation: are we succeeding in reducing waste?

Motivational stories for every day

Every day, teachers tell a motivational story that helps children think about food and waste:

• How an apple saved its friend the carrot,
• The journey of a peach pit,
• What happens to food that ends up in the trash,
• How a plastic lid looked for a new home,
• The life of a piece of packaging – or how many times can you be useful?

We read these stories during community circles and use them for open questions and discussions with the children.

Project outputs and benefits

• An original "Rescue Town" will be created – a joint artistic and environmental project involving all classes.
• Cooperation between children and teachers across the preschool will be strengthened.
• Children will learn ecological habits in a playful way and gain a basic awareness of a responsible approach to food and waste.
• The involvement of parents and the community will support environmental education outside the preschool.
• The project is easy to replicate and could become an annual tradition at the school.