World of the Carpathians. Handbook for Enviromental Education

To prepare this publication, we built our work on the long experience that DAPHNE has had with preparation of handbooks for elementary school teachers – World of Wetlands, World of Peatlands, World of Grasslands, World of Forests, and Diversity of Life. However, this is the first time when a handbook exceeds theborders of Slovakia and covers the entire Carpathian arc.

In this context, our focus was on issues related to biodiversity. Considering their form and content, each chapter is divided to the information part for teachers, activity proposals for pupils and worksheets. Forty authors and reviewers from all Carpathian countries were involved in the preparation of the chapters. Each made a contribution of their knowledge within their field of interest, thus building up the mosaic of life in the Carpathians. To compile the handbook, we chose to apply the habitat approach. Within the frame of the main Carpathian habitats – forests, grasslands, waters and wetlands, extreme habitats – you will get to know the main groups of organisms (vascular plants, bryophytes, lichens, fungi, mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fishes, invertebrates), which live there. Based on this knowledge are the activity proposals for pupils as well as the worksheets to these activities. The activities focus on supporting interactive forms and methods of teaching, group work, learning through doing, playing games and completing interesting tasks, having the motivation and active involvement of children as their implicit goal. The publication was issued in both Slovak and English languages.