NATURAL SCIENCE EDUCATION IN PRIMARY CLASSES THROUGH PROJECT ACTIVITIES

In today’s society pupil’s ability to apply knowledge in practice and to acquire knowledge from practice is very important. Therefore, it is essential that in education process pupils would be active participants of creation of the education process, i.e. would solve important problems, would search the answers to the questions of their concern. Project activities are one of the most effective methods combining experience and practice. Project activities as practical-empirical activities are widely applied in the education process of Šilutė Martynas Jankus basic school. One of the most popular project activities implemented in the natural science sphere – activities related to the Earth Day. Every year one week is dedicated to natural science project activities, selecting a particular topic each year. This year the selected topic – flowers. Since the variety of flowers are very wide, primary school pupils of different age groups have been investigating, exploring various flowers. The first year pupils investigated houseplants, the second year pupils – flower garden flowers, the third year – meadow flowers, the fourth year – forest flowers. All project activities implemented by primary school pupils covered 3 activity spheres: analytical sphere (pupils collected information, observed, questioned), creative sphere (created tasks, made various things of secondary materials), and practical-empirical sphere (planted, grew and tasted). Key words: Earth Day, practical-empirical education, project activities, primary school pupils.