The idea of the project was to find a way to make young children (from 5 to 6/7 years old) discover and engage with Europe's cultural heritage by starting from the tangible and intangible world around them.
Considering the young age of the pupils, we have chosen very simple aspects of our cultures and habits to make pupils:
- discover that we all speak different languages that are part of our identities and that we need a common language to communicate (in our case English)
- discover similarities and differences between physical aspects, names, games, ways to express feelings and local environments (all elements of our cultures)
- recognise the value of cultural differences and developing friendship
- develop creativity and inclusion
HOW WE STARTED...
In order to find an affordable way to start developing in young children a sense of belonging to a common European space, we have decided to start the activities with the story of the patchwork Elephant ELMER, and to use it as a project mascotte. The input to start the project activities has been the arrival of Elmer and his brothers in each partner school and the letters that he has sent about every two months to the children with the request to do tasks in cooperation with the partners.
The final products of each task have then been shared in the twinspace and used for further class activities and feedback.
See list of tasks in the pages on the left bar.
Here is the link to our project planning that has been updated according to the flow of the activities
ICT USE IN THE PROJECT
Taking into account the young age of the pupils, they haven't been regsitered in the twinspace but all the activities involving technologies and the use of the twinspace have been done in small groups or as a class under the supervision and support of the teacher. The link to the twinspace has been shared with the parents in order to allow pupils to explain the activities at home. Very simple tools have been used in addition to the twinspace:
- Padlet
- Survey Legend
- Movie maker
- Google presentations
- Google forms
- Pixabay (Advent calendar)
- Poster my wall
WELCOME to the schools involved:
- Scuola primaria "Gianni Rodari" - Roletto - IC Pinerolo V Cumiana
- Scuola primaria Pignatelli - Cantalupa - IC Pinerolo V Cumiana
- Scuola dell'infanzia di Cantalupa - IC Pinerolo V Cumiana
- Scuola dell'infanzia di Frossasco - IC Pinerolo V Cumiana
- Scuola dell'infanzia di Costigliole d'Asti
- MŠ Kytlická, Praha 9 - Czech Republic
- Scoala Primara Lorelay Iasi - Romania
- CEIP La Valverda Spain
- Bartın Vali Tevfik Başakar Primary School 1/B Turkey