I propose three phases of environmental curricula during the elementary and middle school years. In early childhood, activities should center on enhancing the developmental tendency toward empathy with the natural world. In middle childhood, exploration should take precedence. And in early adolescence, social action should assume a more central role. As children begin their forays into the natural world, we can encourage feelings for the creatures living there.
Early childhood is characterized by a lack of differentiation between the self and the other.
Rather than force separateness, we want to cultivate that sense of connectedness so that it can become the emotional foundation for the more abstract ecological concept that everything is connected to everything else. Cultivating relationships with animals, both real and imagined, is one of the best ways to foster empathy during early childhood. Children want to run like deer, to slither along the ground like snakes, to be clever as a fox and quick like a bunny. And the environmentally correct notion of not anthropomorphizing animals can be thrown out the window. In the playful, controlled enactment of them comes a gradual mastery of the personal inner zoology of fears, joys, and relationships.