Creative Play and Learning in Natural Environment to Develop Creative-Ecoliteracy in Elementary School Students

Abstract

Creativity and Sustainability Education (Education for Sustainability Development) are two global agendas in 21st century learning. This underlies the birth of various pedagogical ideas that are relevant for teaching creativity and eco-literacy. Humans are creatures who love to play (homo ludens) and will always desire to be affiliated with nature (biophilia). Therefore, this article aims to describe how creative play and learning in the natural environment are used to develop creative-eco-literacy in elementary school students. This article presents an overview of Participatory Action Research (PAR) studies in social studies teaching. Kemmis, McTaggart, and Nixon (2014) defined PAR as a study, which creates learning innovation through planning, action, observation, and reflection. The teacher makes learning plans by preparing various creative games performed in the natural environment such as playing on grass, identifying colors, shapes, textures of plants and animal, natural sounds, describing, asking, telling about animals, running, digging, and solving environmental problems such as through gardening activities. The teacher does not forget to make the relevance of these activities with the curriculum that applies in the school thematically. Learning activities are then observed and reflected by the teacher to see their effectiveness and impact on students creative-eco-literacy development. The results showed that creative play activities and learning in the natural environment can be used to develop adaptive, aesthetic, cognitive, communication as a language function, sensorimotor, and socio emotional attitudes in students.