“The project came to life with the nesting box for starlings”

The seven Minihaus München nurseries have been awarded the ÖkoKids certificate for a second time. The aim of the 'ÖkoKids – KindertageseinRICHTUNG NACHHALTIGKEIT' [EcoKids Nursery for Sustainability] project of the Landesbund für Vogelschutz in Bayern e.V. [Bavarian Regional Association for the Protection of Birds] is to raise the environmental awareness of even the youngest children in the crèche and nursery. Environmental education has been part of the everyday routine at Minihaus nurseries for a long time. The seven Minihaus nurseries were awarded the Ökokids certificate for the first time in 2019 and this success was continued in 2020: 'Every Minihaus München nursery was awarded two ravens', project supervisor Silvia Wick is delighted to report. The small black cartoon ravens are the Ökokids symbol.

Minihaus München nurseries launched lots of projects around domestic birds last year. Under the slogan 'Hey, listen, who’s that singing?', they made clay bird feeders, took a close look at birds’ nests, watched birds in the garden, made birds out of a huge variety of materials and sang songs with the children all about the world of birds. 'The highlight for us was a small construction project', says project supervisor Silvia Wick. 'Together with our nursery teachers, the children built a nesting box for starlings.' Minihaus also put the instructions on the home page of its website so that interested families could copy the nesting box at home. After it was complete, the nesting box for starlings was hung up in the garden of the Pippinger Strasse Minihaus and, to the great delight of all the children, a pair of starlings actually started nesting in it shortly afterwards, raising a brood of chicks..

Unfortunately, the coronavirus pandemic meant that there was no official prize-giving ceremony, so the Minihaus nurseries received their certificates in the post. To celebrate winning the award regardless, Minihaus quickly organized a bird festival at every nursery in which birds were made out of sugar paper and little bird boxes out of toilet rolls, clay bowls were filled with bird food and birdsong was investigated in Minihaus gardens. The children also watched a film and had to guess which birds were singing. With the support of their teachers, the children also built another nesting box for starlings out of wood, which will now be hung in the garden of the Bognerhof Minihaus.

'The children enjoyed this topic so much and we had so many ideas that we have decided to have another project week on birds', project supervisor Silvia Wick is delighted to report. In addition to the certificate and the ceramic plaque, which now clearly identifies every nursery as an ÖkoKids facility, the Minihaus nurseries were also presented with the small gift of a brochure about domestic birds from the Landesbund für Vogelschutz. Among other things, this tells children what robins eat, the length of a coal tit’s beak and the wing span of a heron.

The topic of environmental protection and environmental education has become a fixed item in the Minihaus routine, which is why the seven Minihaus nurseries have now registered for the “ÖkoKids – KindertageseinRICHTUNG NACHHALTIGKEIT” project again and hope that they can look forward to winning another award next winter.
And perhaps then there will be a proper prize-giving ceremony again, with all the prize-winners in attendance. (jh)