Following

You state that your objective is to stimulate thinking and deliberation, but at the same time with a focus on nature, sustainability and conservation, why this specific focus? I doubt small children would have a firm grip on why these three focus areas are oriented as they are, and if they do know, they are probably strongly affected by their parents believes and not because they have had enough experience to form their own subjective opinions. Guiding questions is also another way of introducing bias into the exercise.

My questions is then if the focus is on the three areas, or on thinking and deliberation? I mean you could stimulate these without making it political for younger children?

Dear Yorgos Stratoudakis Your question has been thinking for two days, I find it very interesting, I start by telling you that your activity with children is really a great exercise that seems extraordinary to me, it is with them that we must start working from these ages if we want to save the planet. In any case, I approve your exercise, but I would like to express my opinion on your questions. First; I do not believe that children of that age can perform logical operations based on abstract thinking, they will need a conceptual apparatus with which to operate to perform operations of this nature. Knowledge as an internally complex and contradictory process, which in its global development advances from the abstract to the concrete, from the phenomenon to the deepest essence of things, from living contemplation to abstract thinking and from this to practice. It also implies the enrichment of the content of the concepts, their reciprocal transition and their specific logic of movement. At this age they do not have enough experiences so that community life, communication processes and social life allow them to fully develop their cognitive experience because practice is the beginning and end of human knowledge. The knowledge in his apprehension of reality passes from the sensory concrete to the abstract and from the latter to the concrete, resulting in its general movement from the abstract to the concrete. On the empirical level the cognitive image reflects the sensory concrete, the immediately given. The general is captured, but in its empirical expression, as the common of several objects or phenomena; laws are relieved, but at the empirical level. Only through abstraction is the concrete revealed as the synthesis of the diverse, the object in all its determinations. Human knowledge mediated by practice transcends reality and through abstractions reveals its essentiality. Knowledge cannot pass from the sensory concrete to abstract thought. This path, like all others, is complex and contradictory. In order to achieve true realization, knowledge temporarily loses its general concrete character and becomes its opposite: in abstraction. All this is true, but it cannot be ignored that children have an incredibly rich internal world and that they are capable of performing the most incredible operations of logical thinking. They may not be able to determine how the residuals of a mining industry impact the ecosystems of the rich coastline of the city where they live, or approach the concept of sustainable development, but without fully understanding other relationships that occur in these scenarios. Here where I live, in Moa, there are experiences of working with younger children and of the ages that you mention in the protection of the red mangroves of the north of the province of Holguín, in Cuba. The results are very encouraging. Secondly; I do not believe that this experiment is harmful for children, it is only necessary to motivate them and you have all the teaching resources to do it. Children will not get bored, just plan everything well. In third place; The experience of the project with the children in the mangroves showed that the direct link with reality keeps them busy all the time in the activity, even this project has a research content in which the children do work that they present in contests. This might seem like a contradiction with what I expressed in the first part, but it is not. Fourth, I believe that the most commonly used materials should be the educational videos produced by different organizations such as National Geographic that are very instructive. In other cases, games, encounters with personalities linked to environmental protection can be developed. There are many means that you can use, information and communications technologies give many options, surely all this will be very interesting for children. I congratulate you on this project and I remain at your disposal to exchange ideas.

many thanks for the contributions so far. Carl Alexander Frisk my brief description can create the doubt you mention, but my view is not either/or: the idea is to be at the intersection of environmental philosophy with philosophy for children, so the objective is to examine with them the relation with nature while promoting active thinking and joint deliberation. I also register your comment on guiding questions as potential source of bias (I will try to make them as neutral as possible, as I intend mainly to work with the views and concerns of the kids) and accept that any such discussion will have a political element to it (at least in the broadest sense of inherent mindsets). This is not something that worries me particularly, nor I see it as a pitfall (you seem to think otherwise, so I would like to understand better your main concerns). I envisage my role in this as that of an honest broker - if interested, see the homonymous book by Pielke, 2007 from Cambridge University Press on the possible roles of science in policy and politics. Juan Manuel Montero Peña many thanks for your generous reply and thoughtful considerations. Especially on the process of knowledge creation I will need more time to unpack it and reflect/study on it, so for now I can just describe the basic ideas I have currently in mind of how to go about the class and introduce my concepts: I am thinking of asking two initial questions in order to place the kids physically in kartesian space, according to the responses: when thinking about nature (or the sea, have not yet decided) the way it is meaningful/important to them i) do they see it in 20 years time to be different than today (state of nature axis) and ii) if they foresee an alteration, do they see this to be mainly driven by human actions or not (degree of human intervention axis)? I will then give a different colour post-it to children in each quadrant and ask them to write/draw three things very relevant to them when thinking of nature (or the sea) and define for each how it will be in 20 years and whether this alteration (if any) would be mainly through human action. the plan is then to allow 2-3 minutes for each child to describe their answers and place all post-its on the board to amass a global response. at the end will let them ask questions to each other, identify things they would like to know more about and ask them if as a result of the whole process someone want to change quadrant. Is is still early days and there will be several iterations to it (including the school teachers), but any comment or suggestion to this early draft plan are welcome.

I've worked with many, many kids on grant funded (NASA SEMAA, Honda Foundation, NSF EPSCoR, others) projects trying to draw kids into scientific reasoning and natural philosophy (take a peek at my profile for examples) and the one thing I've learned is that if its FUN, they will gravitate to and absorb whatever you expose them to. In my case outer space, paleontology, and computers. That being said, I agree that the kids will reflect their parents' values and philosophies, and in my case, sometimes parent's values made the kids' participation impossible.

Great idea and project. Suggest teaching children about biophilia and place-based learning (https://beavercreekmarsh.blogspot.com/2011/01/place-based-learning-on-beaver-creek.html) Have observed that if one takes an interest in one's immediate environment, there is a heart connection. One notices changes in that place and is invested in supporting this connection with thoughts and actions. The rest follows as one speaks from immediate experience and commitment. If we all take responsibility, then our hearts and minds have fun and we thrive in a web of connections in open space.

Finally got to the point of starting the experimental classes of the "thinking lab" about nature: for the next 6 days the first two hours in one classroom of the 3rd year in one primary school of Lisbon is dedicated to the following simple exercise (using a a power point and some post-its): after a very brief introduction of my institute/myself and the definiton of three simple rules, we disorganized the classroom and sat on the floor. Then the students thought of a place in nature that means a lot to them and positioned themselves in space according to their expectations about it in 20-30 years and the role of humans in the perceived change (a few students did not think that their choice will change over time and stayed in the middle). All children used the post-it to describe the current and future state of the place they chose and the majority of them volunteered to explain their choice to the rest of us. All children placed their post-it in the respective space determined by the two leading questions and at the end we discussed the general pattern and found that some of them had second thoughts about their initial choices (there were similiar numbers thinking that the place will become better as those thinking it will get worse, almsot always in relation to human action). I then showed them my preferred nature place, we re-arranged the classroom and said our goodbyes. These were two full and enriching hours that I hope will be repeated in the coming days. The teacher will pick up the discussion and will also make an assessment of the experience with them. At the end, we will meet with the six teachers and the school director (that was also present in the classroom) to get a global balance of the exercise.

Thank you all for the comments, sugegstions and support: when I get to the final point will write another post about the whole experience.

More than 6 months after the last post, with a pandemic in the middle, some additional information on the conclusion of the first activity and the steps planned after (many halted by covid, hope temporarily):

1) The activity described in the previous post was repeated in another five classrooms in the following days of february 2020 - in total participated >130 kids, six teachers and the school director (in all six events) and the feedback was positive: the children liked it, spoke about it among themselves and with the teacher and engaged in additional activities in the hours and days after the event;

2) As a result of this positive feedback, two additional activities were planned (and subsequently cancelled due to covid): an extension of the original activity in the same school (6 mornings in April to continue the discussion outside the classroom, within the schoolyard and in an urban garden adjacent to the school, but also some abandoned area close-by) proposed by the participating teachers, and a repetition of the original activity in a school from a different area of Lisbon;

3) After the months of covid enclosure, colleagues from a University in Lisbon have invited me to present and discuss the experience, both among researchers in a department of environmental science and with high-school teachers. It is possible that in the coming school year there will be some follow-up on the initiative both by myself (possibly focusing on the aquatic sub-space to be more in line with my work environment) and by teachers that want to try the activity in their classes;

4) After the early phase, where the initiative was constructed as a civic need without theoretical study, I start to consult potentially relevant literature on environmental education, environmental philosophy, but also political science on deliberation by children, to enrich future iterations.

If you have experiences or information related to the above and want to share, please do here or by message (do not plan to maintain regular updates here, unless participation and exchanges justify it).