Lahti's environmental education programme introduces local nature to all primary school children. The outdoor education lesson included in the programme was refined in a pilot project, where two primary school classes were able to get out and about and be enchanted by nature in a forest near the school – and learn some very ordinary school subjects while at it.
The lesson starts with a round of falcon tag. It involves students chosen to be birds of prey catching their classmates, small birds who, when caught, remain waiting in place with their wings spread. Soon, a flock of children fly over and wrap their arms around the bird to be rescued, and the little bird flits away again.
After the game of tag is over, they move into the forest, where environmental educator Jenni Jelkänen hands out bird cards to the students, who are now divided into small groups. Their task is to build nests, one branch at a time, for birds such as the great spotted woodpecker, the barn swallow, and the northern lapwing.
– Your hand is a bit like your beak, Jelkänen advises.
Stick thieves approaching the nest can be chased away by emitting a warning call, and, if the nest is left unattended, it is free game for others, Jelkänen reminds the children. Once the instructions are clear, the whole class runs off hunting for nest-building materials.
What is underway is an environmental studies lesson taken outside, with birds as the day’s theme. In the course of the spring, Jelkänen has used pilot lessons like this to hone a model for an outdoor lesson to be attended by all second-graders in Lahti in the future. Lahti’s primary education curriculum will include a new environmental education programme from 1.8.2025 onwards.
In Finland, outdoor and nature pedagogy is being put into practice in schools, daycare centres, and various environmental education projects. Local nature has long been used as a learning environment in Lahti as well, but the environmental education programme will further strengthen the place of outdoor nature education in the city’s primary education system.
The programme will bring environmental education into the mainstream of primary education, alongside the already well-established cultural, scientific, and entrepreneurial aspects of education. Implementing the theme of Lahti as a Learning Environment, the project will bring the city and its surrounding nature close to students.
According to Civics and Education Service Area Manager Kirsikka Saresma, the need for the programme arose from the city’s own strategy.
– Lahti wants to be vibrant and profile itself as an eco-city for sustainable development. Of course, this is one aspect that we have wanted to bring more explicitly into the local complementary efforts being made with regard to the primary education curriculum.
The programme features one-off packages for almost all primary school grades, which have been put into action with support from a wide range of partners. The content of the lessons closely follows the global sustainability and circular economy themes of the national curriculum, but brings them to the local level. Fourth-graders for example will learn about the circular economy at the Salpakierto Kujala processing centre and go on an excursion to the Linnaistensuo mire.
Saresma thinks that outdoor nature-based education is particularly important when talking about the environment.
– We think that children are most impacted by phenomenal investigations of wholes, which take place somewhere else other than at a desk and with a book.
The global situation has prompted municipalities too to think about solutions to societal challenges, and Saresma sees schools playing an important role in this.
– For many children, walking along duckboards into the mire and admiring the world there can be a new experience and give them the feeling that they could do it again. This is what we want to achieve to balance the ever-present media saturation of life. That there are other values that could be introduced to the lives of children.
Saresma sees that outdoor education has long had a strong position, especially in early childhood education, where forest daycare centres and regular outdoor lessons are an established part of the activities of many daycare centres.
This is the case in Lahti as well. The Salpausselkä formations, ridge areas, and ancient bedrock created and exposed by the Ice Age have given the city the opportunity to participate in the UNESCO Global Geopark programme administered by the specialised UN agency UNESCO.
Lahti is home to three daycare centres that meet the criteria of the Salpausselkä Geopark early childhood education programme, which also follow the goals of Agenda 2030 in their activities.
The first daycare centre to join the programme, Kanerva, has trained teachers in outdoor pedagogy and is committed to taking children outside the daycare centre and into the forest at least once a week. Knowledge of nearby nature and a local identity are additionally reinforced by displaying a map of the area in the daycare centre and using mutually agreed terms when talking about the geology of the area. The programme is free of charge, and all early childhood education institutions in the Salpausselkä Geopark region can apply to join. Support for joining in Lahti is available from the city’s environmental educators.
The Kanerva daycare centre is also a Green Flag Eco-School. In the offices of Finland’s largest eco-label, more sustainable lifestyles, such as saving water and energy and adding vegetarian food to the diet, are planned together with children, thus strengthening children’s awareness of their own power to make a difference.
Learning in nature has thus been a priority in Lahti, but the environmental education programme covering almost the entire comprehensive school system is the first of its kind. Thanks to the programme, outdoor education no longer depends on the resources of the institutions or the interests of individual teachers.
The contents of the environmental education programme were designed by a team of class and subject teachers with expertise in sustainable development and outdoor education together with the city’s environmental educator. According to Project Manager Taru Suutari, who coordinated the programme design process, the starting point was to think about what every primary school pupil in Lahti should learn about the theme of the environment – which places they should visit and what they should look into.
– That after nine years of attending primary school in Lahti, the children would have somehow internalised these values of the ecological city and a local identity.
Suutari stresses that the programme aims to provide equal opportunities for all pupils to explore and learn in the local environment.
– It was hoped that the nature of the Lahti region would be presented in a varied way, as not all children are necessarily in a position to be taken to these destinations by their parents.
In addition to promoting sustainable lifestyles, the programme aims to increase children’s contact with nature. This is why nature-based outdoor education is strongly present throughout the environmental education programme.
– The programme is linked to the objectives that are in the curriculum, but we offer a living way to learn about it in the nature of Lahti.
In addition to the outdoor lesson piloted in the spring, Suutari brings up two other examples from the programme. Nature School Kaisla organises water-related research projects around the school’s local waterways for seventh-grade pupils, linking the teaching to the seventh-grade biology curriculum objectives regarding aquatic ecosystems. In the eighth grade, a field trip to a nature reserve is organised, which Suutari says is also linked to various subjects, such as health education and eighth-grade biology, where the explored themes include forest ecosystems and the importance of nature conservation.
It is thus not a question of adding new objectives on top of existing ones, says Service Manager Kirsikka Saresma. In addition to designing materials and planning transports, a handbook has been created for teachers, in which the programme for each grade is clearly described, including in the words of a pupil.
– We have wanted to offer an “I almost did it all for you” type package that is easy for everyone to grasp, while on the other hand ensuring that students can have the same experiences in every school equally.
To make the environmental education programme as effective as possible, feedback from children was also collected during the design phase. According to Saresma, the students’ responses highlighted their desire for nature excursions and activities taking place outside the school. In addition to children’s wishes, the programme also takes into consideration concerns relating to their well-being and development.
Research shows that the time children spend in physical activity and in nature has declined, while the time spent with various smart devices has increased. For example, the increasing tendency of young people to engage in multitasking as a result of smartphone use has been shown to possibly impair concentration and performance on tasks that require patience.
Satu Mälkiä, a class teacher and environmental educator specialising in outdoor learning, who taught the second class of the outdoor learning pilot, believes that taking teaching outdoors is the answer to many of today’s challenges. First, the forest offers health benefits and a place to relax. Second, long-term and persistent outdoor education can strengthen children’s ability to concentrate. Mälkiä has noticed this with her own class in a forest near the school.
– In the early autumn we still heard the school bell ringing in the woods. The further the autumn went on, the less we could hear it. In a way, we sensed the sounds of the forest and the forest itself, and no longer paid attention to the school bell. And I think it was good when the students themselves noticed this.
Third, teaching is more functional outdoors than in the classroom. Children’s gross motor skills improve without conscious effort when moving through varied forest terrain. In addition, an active learning environment can be beneficial for students who find it difficult to concentrate in the classroom.
– There is more room here for noise and for messing about than in the classroom. Students who do not necessarily thrive inside the school walls may actually have a lot of strengths that come out here, Mälkiä states.
In addition, teaching in nature has been found to develop children’s problem-solving abilities, social skills, and teamwork competencies. Environmental educator Jenni Jelkänen feels that children are more engaged with each other and communicate more and more easily with each other in the forest.
– It has also been observed that the roles may be a little different out there in the forest than indoors, which can help the group function together.
Nature also unleashes students’ creativity and imagination. According to Jelkänen, anything that can be found in nature can be made use of in assignments. For example, maths lesson calculations can be done using pinecones.
Learning sustainable life habits inevitably means discussing the climate crisis and biodiversity loss. But the responsibility for solving major environmental crises does not fall on children. Such topics can also evoke challenging emotions in children, including fear, Jelkänen points out.
Instead, outdoor education can provide children with positive nature experiences that are essential for developing a relationship with nature. To show that the environment is associated with good things too, says Jelkänen. An early relationship with nature and a positive attitude towards nature, or sensitivity to nature, provide a strong foundation for environmental awareness and action later in life.
Mälkiä thinks that it is important to stop in the moment and be present – even if it sometimes means throwing away the original lesson plan. In one of Mälkiä’s own lessons, water research was once suddenly replaced by observing swans, but it was worth it.
– In sixth grade, when we were thinking back to our primary school days, a surprising number of pupils said that they remembered the time we were at Kankola beach and the swans arrived. What I find important is the development of everyone’s personal nature relationship and sensitivity to the environment, and that only comes about when you are out here in nature.
Outdoor education can also take place in a built environment, but in the pilot project the lessons were arranged in a forest close to the school. In a forested country like Finland, children’s relationships with the forest have special significance, which studies have shown is carried through to adulthood and influences for example the appreciation of forests.
According to Jelkänen, teaching in a local forest can provide children with an important sense of belonging to a place.
– It can easily feel that school is a bit separate from the rest of the world. This can result in questioning the need for learning about some things. If you are connected to the world outside school and spend time in a forest nearby, learning can start to feel meaningful in a different way, and that place can begin to seem important. People need a sense of belonging to a certain place.
– Come here everyone! Next we will look for worms, but not real worms.
For the last assignment of the lesson, Jelkänen has hidden differently coloured pieces of wool yarn in the terrain. She hands out tweezers, teaspoons, and clothes pegs to the students to collect the “worms”, all of which imitate the various types of beaks that birds have. The differently coloured yarns are intended to illustrate the importance of the protective colouration of animals in nature – a pink piece of yarn is easier to find in a forest than a brown one.
In the outdoor teaching pilot, Jelkänen and Mälkiä both taught six lessons to their own classes: mathematics, Finnish, arts, emotional skills, and environmental studies twice. According to Project Manager Taru Suutari, the feedback collected from the students and teachers in the course of the pilot provides important information on how the participants have experienced the outdoor teaching and how the lessons can be further developed.
The idea is that the subject-specific outdoor lesson plans produced in the pilot will remain freely available to all teachers, so that they can also be used in lessons for pupils in other grades. The hope is that more and more teachers would get excited about outdoor teaching.
Mälkiä says that she has already during the pilot noticed not only a deepening of the students’ connection with nature, but also an awakening enthusiasm in the class teacher.
– She has come to feel more strongly that this could be continued and that this is not rocket science. Those are the kinds of moments that make this really seem worthwhile.
The outdoor lesson offered as part of the environmental education programme is supervised by an external entity. This allows the class teacher to focus on managing the group and also learn about teaching an outdoor lesson.
Despite the guidance and example, teachers can feel that setting up an outdoor lesson alone is a big step to take. Mälkiä has lots of tips for this. First, you should lower your own standards. To get started, she says, you can first take familiar assignments out into the schoolyard and use materials found in nature. The course of the lesson is also made easier if students are dressed for the weather.
And teachers do not need to know everything about nature. Mälkiä says that her studies at the Department of Teacher Education were almost delayed by a year because of a bird exam.
– And I’m still not good with birds, but then you can say to the students, hey, let’s take a look together, let’s look this up together.
The most important thing for Mälkiä is that the teacher is personally interested in nature.
– Personally, I say a lot of “Oh, I’m on fire!”, and that feeling of being on fire is contagious.
Jelkänen also wants to encourage teachers to persevere and get out into nature more often – despite the challenges.
– If the class is not used to going out and you only go out once and it’s a real hassle, you can easily get the feeling that “Ah, this is not working at all, I’m definitely not going out again”.
In Jelkänen’s experience, outdoor teaching sometimes takes getting used to. It is therefore not worth assessing its success or impact on different children on a one-off basis. Over time, both one’s own habits and the benefits of outdoor teaching begin to emerge. It is worth creating structures for outdoor lessons too, such as forming a circle for starting and ending the lesson and for listening to instructions.
In the end, even one moment spent in nature is worth it, Jelkänen says. Because even though the world around children is changing, one thing seems to persist: children’s enthusiasm about nature.
– No matter what the age of the person, the reaction to being handed a loupe is always “wow!”.
