A special hiking booklet “Little Hiker”which children can use to mark their walking activities. This was developed together by the kindergarten and municipality
Modern lifestyle habits lead many of us to do less physical activity. In turn, we have a greater reliance on car use and more health-related problems, leading to a negative impact on the environment. With this in mind, the municipality decided to promote a healthier and more sporting lifestyle through a number of different programmes.
Involving citizens in the promotion of sport is a difficult task. Therefore, the mayor has established a Forum for Sport where citizens can propose activities to encourage a more sport-active local society. As part of this, the municipality started to work very closely with its primary school and kindergarten, working with children from age 1 to 6 years.
One of these suggested good ideas was to develop a special programme for promoting walking activities – including short, organised trips around the village. The municipality has more than 50 km of different walking and cycling routes. Together, the kindergarten and municipality have developed a special hiking booklet which children can use to record their walking activities. The booklet "Mali pohodnik" (called the "Little Hiker"), was developed taking into account all pedagogical aspects for children. Some of the methods used to help the children record their activities include drawing and stickers to express the weather situation on each hiking day; how the hiker feels; what they have seen on a trip; and a part that can be used to insert photos from a hike with family and friends.
Resources needed
Kindergarten teacher’s work, designer (500 EUR), print (1000 EUR for 500 copies).
Evidence of success
For the first hike 65 people were registered which was a really surprisingly high number. But due to the epidemic situation the first hike was postponed. The Municipality Selnica ob Dravi see such activity as very good combination of learning and touristic activities leading to sustainable tourism goals that the municipality would like to achieve. Parents and teachers like the Little Hiker booklet, and the booklet also demonstrates the importance and success of working together with stakeholders
Difficulties encountered
When working on the booklet and on finding suitable routes it was recognised that the routes are not well sign-posted and that the municipality needs more equipment like benches, tables,informative and learning boards,hike signs, tree names and similar such improvements to make the routes attractive
Potential for learning or transfer
The municipality has established ‘Forum for Sport’ that has already worked for two years and produced a number of great ideas, some of them already implemented. It can be easily transferred in any society. The booklet could be translated taking into account the rights of the authors.
