CHILDREN AND NATURE:

TUNING SILENCES, WEAVING IMAGINATIONS

Abstract

Activating senses, raising silences and learning to listen to children’s multiple languages were guiding principles of the research that aimed to investigate children’s relationships and perceptions with and about nature. Starting from the observation of their forms of interaction with the green areas available in the Early Childhood Education institution they attended, this study sought to capture children’s views on nature, revealed in photographs produced by them in the research process, listening to them about their experiences in natural environments and their photographic productions. The gazes and knowledge of boys and girls aged 4 to 5 years old, participants in the proposal, emerged in the dialogic field of investigation and, as narrative contents, were welcomed and made visible through different expressions. Despite what adults (almost) do not see as/in nature, children see small doses of magic in their daily lives, in unexpected angles, filled with complicity among them. Composing memory corners, children bring peculiar objects to life in playful interactions with leaves, stones, earth and water.