School Backyard Drawings by Kindergarten Students: An Interdisciplinary Experience in the South of Brazil

Abstract

The recent urbanization and increasing distance between children and nature have had negative impact both in learning and in the maintenance of healthy life in the natural environment. The development and application of transdisciplinary teaching practices in sciences and visual arts afford to materialize highly relevant strategies in environmental education. Based on these principles, the present study analyzed the possible contributions of transdisciplinary efforts to children’s drawings of the environment they live in. Fifteen elementary school children were requested to draw 1) what they remembered of the school backyard; 2) what they remembered of the “nature” in the school backyard; and 3) what they saw during a visit to the backyard. In addition, semi-structured interviews were carried out to collect the children’s impressions of their drawings. The results indicate that, in addition to the grass growing in the area, playground features and other toys were consistently represented in drawings, indicating that the backyard is strongly correlated with students’ leisure and game activities. When prompted to draw nature elements, trees and some arthropods were drawn, such as insect larvae and bees. For such reasons, it is necessary to improve the students’ ties with the natural environment looking for more significant educational practices in relation to the nature in the surroundings where they inhabit.