Abstract:

In an era of digital transition and increasing dematerialisation of experience, early childhood risks losing direct contact with the world. Meaningful learning occurs through the body in action, where physical engagement precedes symbolisation. The educational setting is not a neutral container but an intentionally designed environment that fosters autonomy, exploration, and creativity. Early childhood services are therefore called to restore the centrality of embodied practice, multisensory experience, and active participation. The project “Grandfather C.’s Garden”, implemented in an early childhood classroom for children aged 24–36 months in a nursery school in North-West Italy, transformed a real-world space provided by a local grandfather into a concrete, intergenerational, community-based learning environment. Through soil preparation, sowing, watering, observation, and harvesting, children developed operational and social skills while strengthening their sense of belonging to the local context and fostering values of sustainability. The grandfather, as custodian of the space and its agricultural practices, introduced a dimension of experiential knowledge transmission and meaningful relationship-building, supporting attention, continuity, and shared engagement (Service-Learning and Community Engagement). Activities were conducted in small groups, with unhurried timeframes and unstructured natural materials, enabling the educator to mediate observation and subsequent reflection in indoor settings. Data were collected through participant observation, reflective diaries, photographs, and semi-structured questionnaires administered to educators and families, focusing on indicators of sensory exploration, operational autonomy, cooperative interaction, and sustained attention. The findings indicate an expansion of exploratory and manipulative behaviours, increased attention span, and the acquisition of recognisable operational sequences, including the ability to respect natural rhythms. The experience demonstrates that integrating a real-world space shared with the community fosters active participation, intergenerational bonds, and a sense of place, while valuing embodied experience, slow time, and situated learning. Symbolic re-elaboration in indoor settings further consolidated cognitive and social skills, offering a replicable and sustainable educational model. In conclusion, the intergenerational garden shows that concrete, multisensory, community-oriented activities enrich the experiences of children aged 24–36 months and provide practical guidance for future educational planning: real spaces, unhurried time, natural materials, and adult mediation promote autonomy, sustained attention, cooperation, and meaningful competences. This model suggests transferable pathways across different contexts, reinforcing the centrality of embodied experience, community participation, and sustainability as key dimensions of early childhood education.

Keywords:

Early Childhood Education, Intergenerational Pedagogy, Outdoor Education, Community Engagement.