About Early Years
Eco-Schools for Early Years has been developed to meet the needs of younger children and is aimed at centres catering to children aged 0-5 years. It’s essentially the same Eco-Schools programme the children will follow when they move on to primary school, with the elements broken down to make it more relevant to this age group.
Who’s included?
N.B For simplicity, all of the above will be referred to as centres in the subsequent pages.
Early Years topics
Early Years follows the nine key environmental topics the Eco-Schools programme is focused around:
How to get involved
Becoming an Early Years Eco-School couldn’t be easier. Firstly you need to register with Eco-Schools.
Once you have done this you can start to work towards an award – Bronze, Silver or the Green Flag award, which is a symbol of excellence in the field of environmental activity.
Once registered, you can start your Eco-Schools journey using this framework:
1. Eco-Committee
2. Environmental review
3. Action plan
4. Eco-Code
5. Involving the whole school and wider community
6. Linking to the curriculum
7. Monitoring and evaluation
The aim of Early Years Eco-Schools is to increase the environmental awareness of the children, led by the centre's adults.
Have a look at the Early Years guidance for projects and ideas that an assessor could expect to see during a Green Flag assessment.
Rupert Bear
Eco-Schools has teamed up with Rupert Bear to create a special set of resources and guidance notes for pupils within the Early Years programme. These include:
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How to create an Eco-Committee
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How to carry out an Environmental Review
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Modified criteria for the Green Flag award
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Colouring sheets
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Dot to dots
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Introductory short stories
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Rupert Bear image for each topic