Modern organization of the educational process implies the active participation of students in the process of cognition. Learning should be conceived in a way that promotes and encourages students to acquire new knowledge, in order to encourage them to further, independent research and deeper knowledge of the world around them. In addition to the creative organization of the teaching process, it is important to encourage student to be creative. Practical work in the history of education has been proven to be a very effective method of work that allows students to acquire new knowledge through active participation, research and making appropriate conclusions. This way of working is very effective because students gain knowledge that they can later apply in everyday life. The traditional approach to teaching in which the learning process is directed only towards the acquisition of factual knowledge does not allow the adequate development of students' cognitive and psychomotor abilities, which are developed to a large extent during the performance of practical work. After a theoretical analysis of key concepts related to the topic of this thesis, which will be presented in the first part of the paper, the second part will present the results of research aimed at determining how many key documents of the Croatian and Slovenian educational system - Curriculum for Nature and societies and Curricula of related subjects in Slovenia, encourage the application of practical work in the teaching of these subjects. In order to obtain relevant data, a comparative analysis of the Curriculum for the subject of Nature and Society (2019) and Curricula (2011) of subjects related to Nature and Society, Cognition of the Environment, Science and Technology and Society was made. The research was focused on the analysis of the given educational learning outcomes and determining their possibility to be realized by the method of practical work, as well as on the examination which offers greater possibilities for the realization of practical work than the curriculum. Research has shown that both curricula contain learning outcomes that can be achieved through practical work, but it is up to teachers to design and use this way of teaching. The results of the research show that the Slovenian Curricula introduce students to a scientific approach, research learning and natural science topics such as forces, energy and the laws of motion much earlier. Natural science topics and their associated learning outcomes provide many opportunities for practical teaching, since these are contents whose comprehension is limited if only verbal methods of cognition are applied.