Head in the clouds
Start date: Sep 1, 2015,
End date: Aug 31, 2018
PROJECT
FINISHED
"Head in the clouds" project is about increasing scientific spirit by studying meteorology and comparing weather amoung eight european countries. Weather seems to be a very common subject. Despite of this, its technical aspects are rarely studied at school. It has nevertheless a real and concrete impact on our daily life. Studying weather is a way to teach sciences through multidisciplinary activities. This three years project addresses primary school pupils, irrespective of sex, origin, social level or abilities. It is shared in six semesters :
- recording weather (creating meteorological instruments)
- states of water (experimenting to understand their role in weather)
- clouds and extrem natural phenomena (experimenting to create a cloud, creating a clouds dictionary, creating a boardgame)
- astronomy (comparing seasons, experimenting to understand lenght of days and night, high of the sun...)
- global warming (comparing effects on culture, water level...)
- weather and health (comparing flu epidemic dates, Seasonal Affective Disorders, protecting from the sun...)
Pupils are learning to observe, make working hypothesis, develop a line of argument and imagine experiments. In this way they are developping their curiosity, their criticism, their creativity and increase their interest towards sciences.
The great diversity of involved countries provides a wide panel to observe and compare. This enables our pupils to learn European geography, increase their feeling of European citizenship and their openmindness.
By learning to love sciences from the earliest age, by learning to love Europe from the earliest age, our pupils, boys and girls, will probably be more inclined to study sciences later and, why not, increase the number of European scientists !