Thanks to the Move Your Paws educational programme, children transform into bears, chamois, kingfishers or lizards. Trough animal exercises they warm up their “paws”, “wings”, “hooves” or “tails”. In the programme, we combine the joy of movement with a playful exploration of our natural world.
Teachers deliver the programme themselves with the help of the materials and guidance provided by DAPHNE. Over the course of the year, children with the help of the teachers explore at least three and up to ten different habitats such as meadows, primeval forests, rivers and peat bogs. They learn about five protected animals – the inhabitants of the habitat.
Through playful exercises, exploratory indoor and outdoor activities, habitat posters, species cards, worksheets, stories and nursery rhymes, they gradually deepen their knowledge of nature and build an emotional connection with it.
Materials also develop their mathematical abilities and graphomotor, speech&language and social skills.
The programme is suitable for the age from 3 to 6 years, but many materials can be used also for 1st and 2nd grade in elementary school.
In the school year 2024/2025, we piloted the programme in 26 nurseries, across 36 classes, involving over 700 children. Thanks to feedback from teachers, we have refined the programme to meet the needs of different types of nurseries and children of various ages. In the 2025/2026 school year, the programme was run in 102 nursery schools. In the 2026/2027 school year, 109 nursery schools are taking part.
We have networked the participating nurseries with conservationists and environmental education experts from national parks and protected areas. They take the children on nature excursions or visit the nurseries.
Through these field trips or in-class programmes, they build on what the children have already learnt with their teachers through ‘Move Your Paws’ programme, adding value in the form of natural materials such as feathers, insect specimens or a dormouse’s nest, as well as expert skills such as imitating bird calls.
We have published some of the programme’s materials on this website for parents of young children and the wider public. We promote the use of these materials through the media and on social media – for example, through collaboration with an influencer – as well as via information stands at public events and festivals. We also prepared three filed trips to Natura 2000 sites for families.
The Move Your Paws approach provides a transferable model that can be adapted to different geographical contexts and biodiversity themes. By combining movement, play and nature discovery, it offers a practical pathway for creating stronger emotional connections between children and the natural world – an essential foundation for future biodiversity conservation. If you would like to replicate this model in your country, community or protected natural site contact us at rozhyblabky@daphne.sk.
Nature knows no boundaries. Rivers often flow through several countries. Birds may nest in Slovakia but spend the winter in Africa. Even bears and beavers pay no heed to national borders when seeking a new home. This is one of the reasons why Natura 2000 was established over 40 years ago.
This network of protected areas safeguards the rarest and most endangered species of wild plants, animals and natural habitats within the European Union. It ensures relatively uniform protection rules across Member States.
For the ‘Move Your Paws’ programme, we selected primarily animal species of European interest that are protected under European legislation and are subject to conservation measures within Natura 2000 sites.
You can find out more about Natura 2000 on the ‘Príroda pre všetkých’ website. The project aims to help improve the protection of Natura 2000 sites in Slovakia.
The Daphne Institute of Applied Ecology was founded in 1993 and focuses on applied research, nature conservation and environmental education. We have long been committed to the restoration of habitats that have been disturbed and are under threat.
For example, we have revitalised overgrown meadows, drying wetlands and peat bogs, as well as unique salt marshes and sand dunes. Our nature restoration projects are always accompanied by environmental education and awareness-raising activities in local schools and communities
For more than 25 years, we have been running environmental education programmes and field trips – primarily in nurseries and primary schools – using experiential, exploratory and playful approaches. Around 30,000 to 40,000 children take part in these each year. The ‘Move Your Paws’ programme is therefore based on our many years of experience.
The ‘Move Your Paws’ programme was developed by the DAPHNE Institute of Applied Ecology in collaboration with partners as part of the ‘Nature for All’ project (LIFE – IP NATURA 2000 SVK), which is supported by the EU under the LIFE Programme and from the state budget via the Ministry of the Environment of the Slovak Republic.
Co-financed by the European Union. The views and opinions expressed herein are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union or CINEA. Neither the European Union nor the grant provider accepts any responsibility for them.
Illustrations © Lucia Zednikovičová, 2024, 2025
DAPHNE – Institute of Applied Ecology
Podunajská 24
821 06 Bratislava