6 Summary of Session 7

Now that you have completed this session, you will be aware of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals and the ways in which these are relevant to early childhood. You have seen how human and environmental health are fundamentally interconnected and that there is a need to foster an ethic of care towards nature from birth. Professor of Practice, Jan White explained her concept of nature friendly nurseries and the need to think about how settings can enrich their outdoor environments not just to benefit children, but also to contribute to environmental health. The last part of the session focused on ways in which practice can help children to ‘grow up green’.

You should now be able to:

• outline the key dimensions of the global environmental crisis
• recognise the interconnections between human and environmental health
• describe what ‘growing up green’ could look like in practice.

In the next and final session, you will be thinking about the big questions needing to be asked in relation to the youngest children and the outdoors.

You can now go to Session 8 [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] .