"WHEN WE STARTED LOOKING AT THE MAPS, A LIGHT TURNED ON IN MY BRAIN AND I STARTED STUDYING ABOUT THE PLACES” - TEACHING CHILDREN AND GEOGRAPHY IN THE EARLY YEARS

Abstract

This paper presents reflections that emerge from teaching children and geography in the early years of elementary school. It is based on pedagogical conceptions that were constituted from teaching practice, based on the assumptions of historical- cultural theory, of the Geography of Childhood, ingrained in the dialogical perspective. Thus, such reflections aimed to give meaning to teaching and to theorize it with curiosity, without, however, the intention of finding recipes and formulas that can be used deliberately. It is worth mentioning that in school, the search for the constitution of a pedagogical space that fosters a dialogue, and that listens and proposes geographies with children, does not need to create space-times in which children exercise and rehearse their own ways of being and of being in the world. In this trajectory, the concerns, practices, actions, beliefs, theories and, above all, the interaction with children have stirred the thoughts, which reverted into investigative paths. While in such paths, it was found to be essential, didactic proposals that allow the expression of the world in different languages and consider the importance of knowledge that emerges from children's spatiality, experiences, imagination and creation.