Early childhood education in Japan does not have a subject framework, and five areas: "health", "human relationships", "environment", "language", and "expression" are set as standards for early childhood education. Food and Nutrition Education is conducted in the "health" area [1], but details of the teaching method are not provided. Besides, the procedure for systematic career education from early childhood is not specified. According to this background, we have developed RIKADOKU (science reading) programs to cross "environment," "health," and "language" using the trade books [2]. We adopted Bybee's 5E Instructional Model (5E-model), which BSCS Science Learning that leads life science education in the United States, has shown as an effective teaching model; as a theoretical framework [3]. In this research, the third educational program in our RIKADOKU series, which adds " human relationships " such as food culture and distribution to the perspective of crossing "environment", "health" and "language" was developed and the results of the practices are reported. The program was planned by interdisciplinary members through multiple online meetings. The practices were conducted in a public nursery school in urban areas and a private kindergarten in rural areas. Results show that the children became interested in where their food came from, as well as the increase in awareness to the facilities and people involved in manufacturing and distribution that exists before the milk arrived at their home. Besides, the results such as the teachers planned an extra activity to visit a nearby supermarket with children, suggested that the program influenced on the teachers' view of career education. On the other hand, the awareness to the facilities that are far from children's lives, such as "inspection sites" was not increased. Besides, children in urban area seemed not to have as much sense of familiarity with the ranch or cows as those in rural area. It suggested the necessity of improving the program to match the actual experiences of children. Hence, we would like to conduct a comparative survey focusing on the relationship between the difference in actual experiences of children in urban/rural areas and the effect of the program.
Keywords: 5E model, Food and Nutrition Education.
References:
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MEXT. (2008). Course of study for Kindergarten.
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Haraguchi, Rumi, et al. (2020). 5E-model ni Motozuita Shoku to Kenkou ni Kansuru RIKADOKU Puroguramu "Chichi wa Eiyou ga Ippai" no Ritsuan (Planning of a science reading program "Milk is full of nutrition" based on the 5E model). The 23rd Japan Society of School Library Science Annual Conference.
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Bybee, R. W., Taylor, J. A., Gardner, A., Van Scotter, P., Powell, J. C., Westbrook, A., & Landes, N. (2006). The BSCS 5E instructional model: Origins and effectiveness. Colorado Springs, Co: BSCS, 5, 88-98.
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