The Earth Cube is a motivational strategy for more effectively living out key principles supporting a healthy and sustainable planet.
Its objective is to encourage –at personal and collective levels– transformation that may drive the little ones to grow with responsible behavior in order to respond to the needs of others and of the environment.

The Earth Cube is based on a lifestyle encouraged by the Eco-One Project, an international ecological/cultural initiative present in over 180
countries with a social platform connecting children and youth from all over the world, allowing them to exchange their own experiences in the environmental field.

These are the words reported on the six faces of the cube: we’re all connected;
discover amazing things; everything is a gift; only what is needed;
smile on the world, the time is now.

The participants are provided with suggestions as to how to live and put into practice the phrases on the cube.

For example, for “the moment is now” the explanation is that our world cannot wait any longer: it needs us to act –now– in order to improve things taking care beyond one’s own vital space, repairing and replacing, turning off lights and the computer during the night, making use of both sides of a paper.

The pedagogical value of the “Earth Cube” finds its bases in an active learning method through which the child
is involved and made responsible, takes action, finds solutions to the problems and learns new things from his/her actions (learning by doing) as well as the consequences that his choices have on the world around. Actions are accompanied by thought (learning by thinking).

The child, when acts and fulfils a new action is driven to thinking, to reflect, to face his/her friends and mates with a view to develop his/her meta cognitive and prosocial skills. Every day and continuous exercise of virtuous behaviors and their dissemination through practices among peers not only reinforces the intrinsic motivation for such actions but also creates new habits in the child’s life which will eventually become acquired automatic responses.

This is an educational investment, under the form of a game, allowing children to improve their lifestyle and their relationship with the environment.

The teachers and educations who ask for it receive the didactic set “EARTH CUBE” for free. It consists of:

• Classroom cardboard cube, big format;
• Support for the classroom cube, cardboard;
• 20 A4 cards with a personal Cube to cut out and compose;
• 20 leaflets with instructions for the use of the Cube.

The educator shall start with the “Earth Cube” and invite children of his class/group to use it.

In the classroom the big format Cube can be thrown right before lessons start.
The teacher periodically gathers feedback from students listening to the experiences lived and telling about them at the website www.ildadodellaterra.it so that they are shared all over the world.