Collaborazione tra Museo e Università: un percorso in classe che parte dai diorami.

Dioramas are one of the most popular attractions of the Milan Natural History Museum. In collaboration with the Museum staff we carried an educational project for primary school children. Small groups of children were asked to reflect on their feelings, emotions and thoughts in relation to an assigned diorama and to share them with the others in the group. These observations were then brought to bear on the classroom work. The scientific and didactic approach was integrated with the emotional one. Based on these activities, we have developed a guide that includes dioramas-correlated items to help teachers develop creative educational paths and propose them to their student. The distinguishing features of the project are: -establish a virtual relationship encompassing also emotions and feelings, with the diorama’s environment -discuss the characteristics of different diorama’s environments in the classroom -compare all daily life environments with those showed in the dioramas -realize a final product to share with other educational organizations -motivate students to become friend of a natural environment and understand the importance of its conservation. Our actual results encourage future sharing of the project and the expansion of educational work to other museum’s dioramas.