During the 10th, the 11th and the 12th of October, Erasmus Days have been celebrated all over Europe. The schools of our Erasmus project “Learning Outside in the European Nature” have dedicated different events to this celebration preparing logos, posters, and crones. They also invited the families of the students to join the scholar European atmosphere!
As the celebration of ErasmusDays is coming closer we are getting prepared. At first, we have designed a banner which shows the constant participation of our school in various Erasmus programs. At the same time, we are choosing exceptional artworks, postcards, photos, flags and posters to be exposed to an open gate installation inside and outside the classrooms of the school. The event will be open to the families of our students, to other teachers and to the local community. The principle aim of the event is to present the central idea of every project and also disseminate the great feeling of sharing experiences with partners around Europe.
The 26th of August was a beautiful day full of joy, excitement and activities in Aruküla kindergarten. On that day 8 groups of children, all together about 120 participants were taking rhythmic activity like teachers saw it in Italy, practicing relaxing yoga like teachers enjoyed it in Greece, dancing a traditional italian children’s dance, looked back to transnational project years.
In the evening of the same day 31teachers came together for seminar to evaluate the results of two-years project, through presentations get knowledge about kindergarten education in Greece and in Italy, to participate in outdoor activities we saw in Italy. A budget overview was also provided and a picnic with dishes from project partners cuisine was held too.
Thank you, dear project partners, for this great journey on outdoor education and cooperation!
On Friday 23rd of August 8 teachers of Eramsus+ team at Aruküla kindergarten headed to town Pärnu to get knowledge about research oriented learning. Connections between outdoor education and research oriented learning were main goal of this training.
On first training day we got information about backround and theoretical part of this pedagogical method from professional trainer and practicing teacher Kaidi Tuus. We made experiments and discoveries with different materials on different fields.
On second day we visited kindergarten Mai in Pärnu, which is methododical center of research oriented learning. We discovered the garden of the sences through personal experiences in this kindergarten. We also explored innovative outdoor sports and music opportunities in this kindergarten.
It was great inspiring training trip for teachers with professional trainer!
From October 11 – 2019
Erasmus+ Dissemination in the open air!
Pupils and teachers of Pre Primary and Primary schools at Ottavo Circolo Piacenza, Italy, will celebrate #ERASMUSDAYS 2019 spreading Erasmus+ flyers, posters, slogans and drawings on the benches of parks and playgrounds and at Montecucco park, where some book houses were placed, in order to disseminate the great outcomes of the Erasmus Plus project “LEARNING OUTside the classroom IN the EUROPEan nature”.
https://www.erasmusdays.eu/event/erasmus-dissemination-in-the-open-air/
https://web.facebook.com/people/Marisa-Badini/100009041693985?_rdc=1&_rdr
https://www.instagram.com/nuovisogni/
On the 2nd of July, 50 pupils spent a day outside in the park closed to our school.
Under the fresh shadow of linen and chestnut trees they had play many outdoor games. The oldest children helped the youngest and explained the rules.
Finally after a lots of effort every one had the pleasure to eat a healthy picnic with many parents who came for an hour to share the pleasure of being outside and spend time together before going on holidays!!
On the 1rst of July 2019 the Greek National Agency, State Scholarships Foundation (IKY) www.iky.gr
organised with great professionalism a day conference for the coordinators of Erasmus+ Strategic Partnerships – Co-operation for Innovation and the Exchange of Good Practices in the field of education dedicated to final report and dissemination of the projects. Our coordinator Vassiliki Anagnostou participated with joy, had the opportunity to meet colleagues coordinators of other Erasmus+ projects, exchanged thoughts and ideas regarding European programmes and discussed about learning outside the classroom in the European nature. It was a successful meeting among active teachers who love Erasmus+ projects!
The visit to the Ottolenghi Pre-primary school was full of surprises! A classroom with a rainbow in every corner and a garden with arts and crafts everywhere composed a perfect scenery. A concert was organized to be presented in the open air and students were proud to be the greatest musicians! Their teachers and their maestro guided them to play their instruments like an authentic orchestra and the audience was happy to hear it. We all felt very lucky to listen to the classical music from the “orchestra dei sogni”!
A fresh idea of combining storytelling with art was presented to our group of European partners at the Don Minzoni Pre-primary school. The students of 5 years old with the support of their teacher narrated the story of “the hungry caterpillar” in a creative way. They moved, the acted, they talked and they offered us a joyful hour!
Visiting the Cervini Pre-Primary school, happy voices offered us a warm welcome! The students of 4 and 5 years old and their teachers presented a rich program of English songs in their schoolyard. Happy students and teachers combined movements with phrases in English in the open air!
The second day of our transnational meeting in Piacenza we enjoyed a “matinee” full of music! We visited the Besurica Pre-Primary School where we were invited to follow the program “Ritmia” in its garden. In a theatrical scenery with trees decorated with colorful ribbons, the teacher of “ritmia” lesson showed us a unique way to combine movements, voice, and rhythms. Synthia, the creator of this great program, prompted all the partners to participate, move and relax with the students of her class. It was an unforgettable experience and the best way to start our day in the Italian nature!
Another surprise was expecting us inside the school. A homemade Erasmus+ cake gave a sweet flavor to our staying in Besurica pre-primary school! 
On June 19th during the first day of our transnational meeting in Piacenza an artistic workshop was organized by Ilaria Casciaro at Carella pre primary school. Based on the book “La Fabbrica dei Colori I Laboratori di Hervé Tullet” students, teachers, Erasmus+ partners and representative from Erasmus + Italian National Agency followed the instructions accompanied by music… used the colours of European partners’ flags in order to create a unique colourful and joyful banner! An artistic creation that symbolises our friendship and cooperation!
An article dedicated to our transnational meeting in Piacenza was posted on the local newspaper’s site piacenzasera.it
The schools of Piacenza always more European, thanks to Erasmus+ projects!
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2411391242256367&id=224536970941816
Our Erasmus+ project was presented on Erasmus+ Indire National Agency’s site and Facebook! Mrs Valentina Riboldi representative from Italian National Agency for Erasmus+ projects, who participated in our transnational meeting in Piacenza, expressed her opinion that for her it was a great pleasure experiencing LEARNING OUT IN EUROPE!
The 3rd and final Transnational meeting of our European project took place with great success from 19th till 21rst of June in Piacenza!
Many meetings in Primary and Pre primary schools, presentations of all partners participants, dissemination of our project to more than 60 teachers of the region, great participation of representative of the local municipality Mr Jonathan Papamarenghi, the coordinator of Infoambiente Mrs Alessandra Bonomini, the representative of Erasmus+ Indire National Agency Mrs Valentina Riboldi. We had many discussions for the evaluation of our project and the cooperation regarding the Final report.
On Thursday 13th of June we had the great pleasure to welcome a small farm in our school yard !
More than 100 children sat outside in the cold and rain to see a show with the animals of the farm. Some pupils could give a bottle of milk to a baby pig. The milk came from the goat.
Children could see hen, cock, baby sheep, baby pig, goose, rabbits, canettons…
They were allowed to caress the animals and they enven milked the goat !
Its was a great oppportunity to learn outside the classroom (the name of every animal, what they eat, eggs or babies …and learnt a lot concerning the animals of the farm.
Children also learnt how to make goat cheese !!
All the pupils were very pleased and excited as itw as an unusual experience !!!
On Friday 24th of May Pre Primary and Primary classes from Ottavo Circolo took part in the celebrations for the 24th birthday of Montecucco park. A small bat house was located on the first tree of the park:( Montecucciolo tree ) by the fightfighters.
3 classes received a price for MIGLIA VERDI ( GREEN MILES) .Each Group was showing our project logo . Song, dance, Poetry, playing instruments and having a pic nic on the grass was great fun!
Houses for books were also located in the park.
You can take a book and leave another one… Culture in the green!
The great closure of our project was a beautiful journey to Greek culture, to Cycladic culture with the poetry of Odysseas Elytis. The kids presented their theatrical play with joy in front of their families and many friends of our school! The audience was informed about the aims of our European project and congratulated all the students – participants who were honoured with a special personal award! The exhibition of these artworks were presented in our Erasmus+ corner of our garden where the party was continued!
This year we decided to celebrate World Environment day on June 5th as it is.
As weather was great and there were no more snow left in our garden, some groups started day with happy breakfast at outdoor and they enjoyed it a lot with good apetite.
Later all the kindergarten came together to open new musical wall. Some musical examples from music teacher and children started to experiment with new instruments. It was a great day full of sunshine and happy experimental music as neighbors could hear it!
Thank you, Greece team, for this lovely idea!
Floor games in the schoolyard were the central subject of our Erasmus+ program for May. We used different options for everyday lessons -math, language, science, arts, physical education- and we transformed them into joyful outdoor activities. Kids created a boat by using plastic bottle caps, they did their magnet fishing, they checked all the letters of the alphabet, they run with a plastic glass full of water…They really enjoyed all of them!
The Open Day of Gates, 29 May 2019
The Open Day of Gates on Wednesday May 29, was a great occasion to meet over 100 parents and grandparents to promote the results obtained in our European project.
Teachers worked with all the kindergarten students on that day, more than 140 children, in partnership with parents and grandparents, and made special artworks using different working techniques and different materials, most of them natural. The pedagogical experiences of that day were unique and unforgettable.
On Monday 28th of May, 26 years old pupils had entered a contest on mail art organized by Aline Rutily from the association « Paysage et patrimoine sans frontière »
The work shop was organized in their classroom and they have to decore envelope with flowers drawn with grassy chalk. The stamp was realized from a big mural created by children from the very famous picture of Claude Monet « Poppies field ».
On Saturday the 25th of May we had our artistic exhibition on all the work done by the pupils of the school. At the same time we disseminate our Erasmus + project and explained to the famillies what has been done in our school and in the partners’s schools.
3-4 years old children decorated the school ground by painting the trees with flags of the schools partners.
Our Erasmus corner was decorated with sounds bottle. The bottles were decorated with partners countries‘s flags and filled with semola, water, stones and suspended to our kiosk. Pupils and famillies could shake then and hear the sounds !!
During the open gates our mayor and municipal councillors went to visit us and where were impressed by all the work done and our project ! More than 200 famillies went to admire the exhibition !
For children and teachers itw as a real success !!
Artistic exhibition and dissemination of our Erasmus project.
Our school ground decorated with snails painted by 4 years old pupils !
With the great help of our parents’ association a new corner with herbs was created in our garden! Thyme, lavender, rosemary, lemongrass were added to the plants of our school yard. All the students smelled them, learned their names, discussed about their use in kitchen and every day life, felt closer to nature!
We are doing more and more outdoor activities at the Erasmus corner. Outdoor education is very important to us thanks to this European project. Thus the small group shaped dough from flour and water and
made pretzels of different shapes and sizes after which they did sport and
jumped among the circles. And the big group served the snack at the outside
Erasmus corner and enjoyed the beautiful weather.
In our garden on May 24th we had the school party. The teachers offered to children and their parents the games of the past: fishing, rings, marbles, world game, pea-shooter, draught-rope, skittles.
We looked carefully and admire the Van Gogh and Monet’s paintings; after the children painted their masterpieces: The starry night,The sower, The waterlilies
Estonia is a land of hiking and we start to train this great habit in early childhood.
In Aruküla kindergarten we have long tradition of hiking twice in a year -autumn hike and spring hike. Last year we had lovely Erasmus experience – hiking with parents, this year we found another exciting way to connect two great pedagogical approaches – outdoor education and adventure education.
Purpose of our hike on 21 May for 4-5 year old pupils was first of all to investigate life forms in water bodies and learn social skills through adventure centered experiences.
On our 3,4 km hike we had several critical moments to solve problems like what to do when your feet are wet, how to build a bridge over the stream, how to work all together as a team, how to share your last lunch sandwich with your team-mates, what was a cause for the death of a wild boar who`s skeleton we found…
As adventure education is an active process, on that great day we learned a lot about nature and life at outdoor through adventures.
We explored and discussed that the soil, trees, animals give us all we need to live and grow. We went for shopping at the supermarket of our neighborhood. Then we made the “focaccia” with daddy Fabio, he is a baker.
Wednesday, May 14, twenty middle-class of our students accompanied by their teachers, parents and grandparents had a fresh experience at the “Chocolate Museum” in Breaza (40 km North from Ploiesti). For the first time they entered the wonderful chocolate world, where they painted a black chocolate tablet with a special brush and learned a lot about the history and chocolate production. Because of the rainy weather, at the end of the activity we made a short picnic outdoors and they enjoyed excited chocolate painted by them.
We spent a lovely spring morning at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center where there was an exhibition dedicated to public sculptures by iconic artist George Zongolopoulos. All the students took part in an educational program by experts and they enjoyed the secrets of these unique metal sculptures. Coming back to school, inspired by our artistic excursion, kids created their personal or team-work arts crafts!
The children explored the natural elements of sky: sun, moon, clouds, rain,
snow, rainbow.
They decorated the ceiling of the classroom with artistic activities.
Every day in the rainbow room the children explore the magic gifts that the sun gives them.
In our garden the trees tell many stories…
The rainbow tree tells colourful things and friendship!
The sun tree tells warm and pleasant things!
The clouds tree tells the beauty of rain, wind and snow!
The night tree tells of the dark… that is not scary!
On Friday the 10th of May 21 children aged 3 to 4 went to a parc owned by a sculptor Noredine FALEK.
First they created with natural elements found in the woods like all artists of land art we took photograph and left all the elements in the nature in order to avoid to destroy it.
Then pupils met the artist who explained them what they can do to create their own « wonderfull garden ». They can use natural elements such as big bark of wood on which they can paint, glu what they want.
They have to chooose shells, feathers, pearls, sands, small pieces of wood… Children were help by parents to glu all the different element.
Children were so happy to experiment the pleasure and difficulties of artistic creation, parents were very pleased to be with them all together in nature.
Then we all had a picnic in nature !
To prepare the exhibition of the closure of our Erasmus + project, on Monday 6th of May, 25 children aged 3-4 had an artistic workshop in the courtyard of the school.
The biological colors were preprared by Karine Bascle a local artist who told pupils what they have to do.
Children have paint the 5 european flags of the schools partners of our project. To help them we had parents who explained how and where to put the right colors.
All children were so happy to paint outside on the trees, at the end of the day they were very excited to explain and show to their parents what they have done !
After several days of rain and cold, the sun came out even on the Day of Europe. Our students, almost 100 children of four groups celebrated in the yard of the kindergarten on freshly mown grass. They made a huge carpet with the flags of the partner countries in our European project, the flag of the European Union and the flag of Romania. Several techniques of work, painting, applications and garments were used. The children were delighted and recognized during the activity, all the European flags.
On the 23th of April Estonia celebrated St.George’s Day, then Estonians make St. George’s Night’s bonfires, organize torchlight processions and special running and orienteering races, to mark the famous uprising of 1343.
Aruküla kindergarten arranged for children a running competition with “torches” too. The kids ran around the kindergarten. At the beginning older children and after younger, all together 165 runners. Teachers helped and encouraged them. Also teddy-bear mascot from local sweet factory visited our outdoor activity.
An event was completed with award ceremony where all the children received a chocolate for the participation.
Luckily there was a sunny and warm day for our outdoor sport event!
Our educational team is very well connected in social media. In Twitter, our project’s memories from our training event in Greece were selected and presented in April 2019 collection of incredible EU-funded Erasmus+ projects.
During this school year we emphasized the importance of farm life. We integrated many subjects and tried to find connections with farm life. Thematic year ended with the whole week before the Easter with different activities connected with farm life. All activities took place at outdoor.
Every group visited local small farm. Children could feed and touch cows, sheeps, gooses, roosters, turkeys, chickens and a pony. Also the farm lady talked about every animal. Children visited stable and saw how these animals can live during the whole winter.
There were different types of real chickens in our kindergarten. Every group visited chickens in our outdoor classroom. Chicken-costumed teachers showed us what they eat and why chickens are important and useful for us. After getting new knowledges we danced chicken dance.
Another day we had rabbits in our outside corner. There were different types of rabibts: for meat, for skin and pets. Rabbit-costumed teachers teached us why people grow rabbits and later we made a special easter ritual to be more healthy next year.
On the last day of this week there was exposition of every group’s craft creation about farm life.
Also we made conclusions about the whole week. Children and teachers were happy and full of positive emotions and new knowledge about animals and inspiring week.
Our training event from 3rd till 5th of April 2019 was published in local news! At local site nou-pou.gr on 10/4/2019
As Easter approaches we started preparing ourselves for Holy Week. A visit to the neighbor church was a perfect idea that became even better with the company of grandparents of our students. They were perfect volunteers and kids were totally proud having their grandparents in our school team. We all walked carefully to the church where the priest talked to us for Christ’s Passion.
After coming back to school, we had time to get prepared for the “Easter candle workshop”. For this event it was parents’ turn to participate. We arranged all the ornaments in a …buffet in our schoolyard and when parents arrived, we begun creating with them! 60 Easter candles got decorated and also 60 smiles were shining under the flourished trees of our school garden!
This was the first time that we received a visit from gentle Carousel miniature horses in our school. Two therapeutic miniature horses arrived at school accompanied by their patrons who explained to us the way that these horses make people who suffer feel better. They also taught us how to take care of them. At the end the Carousel miniature horses stood as models so that kids could draw them!
On the 11th of April, 26 pupils aged 5 years old went to the park near our school to create with a local artist Karine Bascle. They could experience the feeling of being an artist for few hours by painting in a real studio. The class was divided in two. One group painted large pieces of cloth to create huge snail. Once the snail is finished it will decorate our playground for our school open gates.
The other group went into the park to collect natural elements to create land art.
Our European partners visited also the Primary school – Dimotiko – of Vouliagmeni where Mrs Sofia Kakatsi, Mrs Tina Karaleka and the headteacher of the school Mrs Alexandra Stathopoulou organized a cheerful welcome in their school, where they presented us their European project “Students against violence in Europe”. It was a great exchange of European projects and ideas!
Our European partners had the chance to see another school of the municipality of Vari- Voula-Vouliagmeni : 1st Nipiagogeio Varis an eco school where Mrs Ioanna Antipati welcomed them in their lemon- tree garden and played all together with her students a traditional Greek game. At the end a beautiful present was given to every teacher… a bouquet of herbs!
This was our first time for our school team to draw with food ingredients. Marmalade, chocolate spread, mustard and beetroot gave us their colors and kids used their fantasy to create beautiful pieces of art. Their parents were welcome in our outdoor exhibition. Wonderful drawings were hung in our Erasmus+ corner.
Our Erasmus + program impelled us to exchange good practices with other schools and so we did. We arranged a visit to 1st Dimotiko Sxoleio Voulas where we “realized” a sightseeing tour to Greek islands together with the students of 5th grade and their teacher Mrs Christina Anastasaki. They presented their power point project and we narrated the story of Icarus who flew from Crete by wearing wings. We all felt much more connected after this experience.
What a unique combination…Our European partners, our students, few of their mothers, and us admired, under the clear sky on the Astir beach, some Greek ancient myths from the theatrical company “Eleftheri theatriki spoudi”. The scenery was splendid: The ancient temple of Apollonos Zostiros from 6th century BC…Our spirit travelled to the past, our soul rested by the sea. This was an excellent experience for all of us!
Our dear partners from Estonia, France, Italy and Romania are finally here and we were all very happy to welcome them in our schoolyard! We had prepared a celebration full of songs, European words and the animation of the Greek mythos of Daedalus and Icarus through our giant hand made book. Few parents came to this celebration offering traditional sweets to our European group and applauding this precious collaboration. Later in that evening our training event took place in our school where 50 teachers from other schools came to learn different educational techniques from our partners. Mrs Feggerou, our Pedagogical Consultant, Mrs Vorylla, the coordinator of Environmental Education Programs of Eastern Attica and Mrs Karayianni the coordinator of English lesson practices had supported the event with their presentations about Erasmus+ . All the participants received pencils and note sheets with the Erasmus+ logo!
Pedibus (walk to school) with musicians playing jazz on the first day of spring! Students from primary school arriving at school together with musicians from Piacenza Jazz Fest!
On Wednesday, March 27th, our kindergarten carried out an outdoor activity at Erasmus+ corner. At this activity participated 30 children of 5-6 years-old who played with enthusiasm, roles from a play inspired by a traditional Romanian story called, THE THREE GOAT’S KID” that has an educational value for the children. The story tells of a spoiled baby goat by three goats: mother, aunt and grandmother without whom he refuses to dress, eat and sleep alone.
The students have creatively illustrated the content of the story in a great book they made with fine artwork. In making the book they used various techniques: decorative drawing, painting, applications and clothing.
This spring 8 groups, all together about 150 children, of our kindergarten had a very fun day at the ZOO. The largest zoo in Estonia is in Tallinn and it’s almost 80 years old. Tallinn zoo holds the best collection of mountain goats and sheep in the world. There are outstanding number of eagles and vultures and a remarkable collection of owl and crane species.
We had a thematic tour about owls, polar bears and domestic animals, but after that we watched the other animals too. Children listened to the guide and they were very interested of that. At the end of our tour children played a game with the guide and reminded what they learned.
We had a sunny weather outside and children was learning outside the classroom!
In a wonderful spring day we tried to capture the beauty of blossom trees by observing them through mirrors … Our garden was covered from little pink flowers from our favorite tree “koutsoupia” and kids loved so much the setting, that they have just sat and drawn it. What a marvelous exposition!
Coming back to our classes we created another koutsoupia by stamping with cotton pieces. Spring is everywhere!
On Thursday 21rst of March 24 pupils aged 4 to 5 went to our children’s library located near a park. To reach the library they had to walk. Then assistant, mothers and teacher read books on different subjects. Then pupils could look by themselves.
Its always a great experience to visit library with other pupils and teachers. A lot of them go regularly with their family but with friend its another experience.
On the way back to school, they spend some time playing in a ground in the park closed to our school.
They could run, play all together or rest !! they just enjoy the pleasure to be outside moving in nature and the first sun of spring !!
On 21 st March our 1st graders were looking for poetic words in the open air! It was a sunny morning full of poetry, that our students enjoyed very much!
By a warm and sunny afternoon on Friday 22th of March, 26 children aged 5 years old had their physical activities outside. They learnt all different ways to throw and catch a ball, alone or with other pupils.
They were very happy to be outside and felt more relaxed !!!
We are glad to present you our activities of the last week.
First of all, Thursday, March 21rst our kindergarten organized a methodical action in the presence of teachers who work with four years old children in some of kindergartens from our city Ploiesti.
At this action were invited and participated 30 teachers and 20 parents of children from two of our classrooms: BUTTERFLIES and STRUMFS.
Our teacher presented two methodical activities: one of them was Mathematics called, Where did fly the butterfly? and it was carried out at the our outdoor ERASMUS CORNER; the other one, was a dance called Spring waltz with the children wearing very specific suits.
Finally, the teachers prepared a power-point presentation about all outdoor activities carried out in this 2 years while we were involved in our international project.
This activity was an opportunity to disseminate our pedagogical experience presenting the types of teaching activities that can take place outdoor, in a specially designed educational space.
Secondly, on Friday March 22, we participated for the second time at the national contest Made for Europe, county level, organized by the School Inspectorate of Prahova County, in the Europa Hall of the Prahova County Council with the participation of all the schools involved in the European projects from Prahova County.
It was a new opportunity to promote our project, dear european partners. Our team has used several promotional materials: roll up, fliers, and albums with photos from the activities that took place throughout the project.
The participants were very interested in our project and remarked that we are the only kindergarten in the county that participated in this event, congratulated us for the results obtained.
On Friday 22 of March the class of 4 to 5 years old pupils prepared their mobile herbs garden. They learn how to plant seeds and all the vocabulary and verbs of gardening
Outside their classroom, in the playground of the school, children put mould in small potted pot then they made a small hold with their finger, where they put seeds of aromatic herbs such as : parsley, basil, coriander, chives, thyme… Finally they water pots and they have to wait and watch seeds growing. To recognize their pot pupils wrote their name on a small piece of wood.
Pupils were very happy and proud to plant they own pot.
To celebrate the coming of spring on 21 of March, 30 pupils aged 6 planted bulbs in our pedagogical garden. After a long dry winter the soil was very hard and it was quite difficult for them to dig but they were very pleased to work outside and plant bulbs to decorate their playground.
Meanwhile in our Erasmus corner, a group of pupils drew bulbs and different gardening tools by observing them.
On the 21st of March our teachers performed a traditional fairy tale about the cat who forgot how to say “meow”. Performance took place in the yard. There were a sad kitten who forgot how to ask for food. The kitten met farm animals on her way and they all taught the kitten how to do their voices to ask for milk. Children got knowledge, how farm animals are useful for people and what products we get from them. Finally the kitten met her mother and the kitten could say “meow” to ask for food again.
After watching performance all kindergarten barbecued sausages on the bonfire. It was first time we used our brand new fireplace bought with Erasmus+ support. Students really enjoyed outdoor activity and now we are waiting when the snow is finally melted and flowers will be blooming… Spring is finally arriving to Estonia.
A safe walk to school was always in our mind and this colorful path made us happy! Drawing circles on the pavement became a very smart way to show the safest way going to school. Mothers volunteers designed the circles and kids stepped on them.
Celebrating carnival brings always a joyful atmosphere to our school. We really enjoyed playing traditional games from different origins in the schoolyard, presenting morals and customs from various places and tasting delicious ‘tzoulamas’ a cretan speciality with rice, sugar and milk that a sweet mom cooked for al l of our students!
We thought about to celebrate the beginning of the Carnival with a very sweet tasting: COTTON CANDY for everyone!!!
A local confectionery lent us the cotton candy machine and so we made it together!!! Sweet taste in our garden!!!
On Thursday 21rst of February 2019 we went together with our students by city line bus to the Art Gallery of our town – Galleria d’Arte Moderna – where they participated in an educational workshop about light and shadow! All the experience … the transfer, the visit in the art gallery and the workshop … was fascinating for all!
It was a brilliant sunny day full of joy, songs and traditional music outdoors, celebrating “Tsiknopempti”. This is the day where we feast on charcoal grilled meat ahead of the lent fasting period leading up to Easter! Delegates from the Parents’ association and from the municipality of VVV came and participated in our festivities!
On the third of March a group of teachers from Aruküla Kindergarten was participating on popular “President’s hike”, in which Kersti Kaljulaid, President of Estonia, also took part.
The “President’s hiking trail” is a 7 km-long trail that starts in Aegviidu. The trail was named after former presidents of Estonia Arnold Rüütel, who came here often and graduated Jäneda School. The hike has taken place 16 times and about 2000 hikers was participating this time. At the end of the trip, a warm soup and a band was waiting for everyone in Jäneda.
We arrived to Aegviidu by train with our president and we were lucky to get her on the photo with our team. Lady in the middle with blue jacket and black hat is the President of Estonia.
It was a happy day full of motivation for healthy life style.
A pneuvmonologist came to our school and taught our students how to protect themselves from the flu virus. She explained in simple words how human body functions and she also gave us few tips of healthy way of living!
It’s a fact that children love very much, animals. That’s why in the last few weeks, in our kindergarten we studied along kids more about animals. Thursday, February 21, two medium- sized groups went out to the Erasmus corner for making an evaluation of the thematic project “In the wonderful world of animals”. The kids expressed their joy by playing, singing and exposing their work.
“The Smurfs” group carried out a craft activity in which they realized bear masks. So they became little “Dancing bears” for one day.
“The Butterflies” group realized a didactic activity named “The animals’ farm” in which they made lots of animals from grandma’s yard with shelter, food for the animals and for their babies. All teaching materials have been made of materials gathered from nature and also recyclable materials.
Also the youngest came, the “Dwarves” group came out enthusiastically in the yard of the kindergarten. We sang, we played and we laughed in the mild sun rays of a beautiful day at the end of February. This week, the children from the small group learned new and interesting information about changes and processes that occur in nature at the end of winter. So, they enjoyed the opportunity of discovering new colours, smells and textures in the middle of nature. We took outside paper and cardboard which the little ones used in order to create colourful flowers and butterflies. The children were very interested in exploring and discovering details from nature and participated with all their hearts at our activities. Dreaming at the most vitalizing season of all (spring) we gathered afterwards in our classroom in order to share with the others our thoughts and impressions and to play a cheerful motion game.
With few weeks in advance on the spring we experienced very sunny and warm days .We couldn’t resist to spend more time outside and to continue to teach or just enjoy being outside !
For example glass of water outside, listening a story read by a teacher, show of their carnival mask for the youngest !
The „Pinocchio” group has carried out Wednesday , February 20, an ecological activity, in the framework of the Erasmus Project, with the theme “We take care of our yard” . Activity with our group preschoolers took place in the yard of the kindergarten, where children practiced the practical household skills specific to the spring season. Therefore, children have cleaned up the green space using specific tools ( broom, dustpan, rake, house bags ), have prepared little houses for the arrival of the birds and enjoyed the fresh air.
During the freezing days pupils had the chance to experiment the pleasure to see frost. Some part of our playground was very frosted therefore children were not allowed to walk or run on ice because it could be dangerous so guided by a teacher they made ephemeral land art. The result had last just few hours but children were happy to put their hands on the icy outdoor carpet !
Is space interesting for the kids? Do they like pretend to be astronauts? Are they fascinated by extraterrestrial creatures? Would they love to get in a rocket and fly to the moon?
Yes, Yes, Yes! All these are really very attractive for young students and impelled us to dedicate few days in “SPACE” realizing different activities: we observed the shining sun by the telescope that a parent of a student carried to school, we got dressed as an astronaut, we created a big alien head with 11 eyes and we decorated “crowns” with rockets and funny eyes and antennas!
On the 14’th of February we celebrated Valentine’s day with dance party in the morning. The teachers talked stories about friendship and then all kids and teachers danced together. It was fun!
What a pleasure to see the spinach in our schools’ garden growing. What a pleasure to have a great vegan cooker in our schools’ parent-group. She was willing to prepare a spinach pie and bring it at our Erasmus+ corner so that all the kids could get a bio tasty bite of it! We all enjoyed this nibble of homemade pie under the sunny Athenian sky very much. …Even those who dislike vegetarian tastes…
A lot of actions are taking place around Europe every year to celebrate European 112 Day on 11th of February. Under the leading of Estonian Rescue Board every year there is a photo contest “From snow to snow” for kindergartens.
Several groups from Aruküla Kindergarten created European Emergency Number by using snow, colours, handy outdoor materials and creativity. Photos of our masterpieces we uploaded to FB-page of Estonian Rescue Board.
It was lovely experience to use snow for something more than just to have fun. Number 112 can save your life and every child participated in this project knows now it well.
When our school- team arrived at “Archelon”, the Sea Turtle Protection Society of Greece, sea turtles were accepting care from volunteers. We were lucky to see young people from all over the world feed and nurse injured and sick sea turtles in a gentle and calm way. It was a perfect way for our students to raise their awareness for animals and also adopt environmental consciousness. Returning to school we found different artistic ways to create our own baby sea turtles telling “Thank you” to the volunteers, writing their name “Careta-Careta” and walking by the sea in a small group!
As we are members of a great European group we thought that it would be interesting for our students to travel –using their fantasy- to our Erasmus+ partners’ countries. The mother of a pupil, who is an air hostess, organized a simulation of a flight at school! She showed us all the tips of a safe way to travel by plane: using belts, sitting in calmness, having emergency reactions… All the kids were enthusiastic with their air-experience.
Returning to the classroom after our flight we had another surprise: another mother volunteer had prepared for us airplanes made by tissue and she came to our school to show us how to paint them. All the pupils left school having a tiny colorful airplane hung from their fingers… Dear passengers, enjoy your flight!
It was a precious gift for our school to receive greetings cards from our European friends. Our pupils were excited to observe the postcards, the stamps and the written texts. We were proud to decorate the classrooms having them hung from colourful ribbons! We were very happy also to exchange calendars for the new year with our partners! Wishes and special cake in our outdoor Erasmus+ corner for a sweet 2019!
On Wednesday 23rd of January 2019 30 of our children, their teachers and members of the ERASMUS + project team met with the children of Greece and Estonia and their teachers. For the children of Greece, our students performed with great joy two songs in English, using musical instruments made by them from recyclable materials: „If you are happy” and „One little finger”. The children of Estonia presented us traditional songs and dances, dressed in traditional Estonian costumes. It was a unique, special experience, our children interacted virtually via Skype with the children of Greece and Estonia and enjoyed a lot.
Our appointment with our partners from Estonia, Italy and Romania was arranged and realized with enthusiasm. We had communicated via Skype sharing sweet moments full of songs and smiles!
On 1rst of February 2019 our project was presented in local site www.3vita.gr specifically an article with title “1 Nipiagogeio Voulas: Learning and art creation in the nature”
presented an artistic aspect of our outdoor activities with students.
Estonia is covered with thick snow. Children are very happy and enjoy every minute being outside. They make snowmans, snowhauses, snowballs, carrying ice plates and sledding. Teachers also use our wonderful weather conditions for teaching different subjects. We do maths: comparing and counting through the experiments and experience. Also we investigate ice, snow, water and snowflakes – connectings between different weather conditions. Winter is a great time for outdoor education!
Volcanoes are always a very appealing subject for the kids. That was the reason for us to realize a visit to “Eugenides Foundation” where an exhibition about Petrified Forest, geoparks of Greece and Cyprus with significant geological heritage under the title “Mnimes Gaias” was carried out. We had the opportunity to see and touch many different pieces of volcanic rocks and hear about their story from the guide of the exhibition. Kids liked the issue this much, that we also invited a specialist to our school. Mr. Tzitziras , grandfather of a student, Dr Mechanic Geologist accepted our invitation and brought a decent part of his private collection of solid rocks to our school team! What a pleasure! Our students were happy to learn more about them and enthusiastic to create their own ones!
On January 17, 2019 at the invitation of the pre-school inspector of the Prahova County Inspectorate we carried out methodical activities of continuous training at the Prahova Teaching Staff House where we promoted our European project “ Learning outside the classroom in the European nature “ through a power point presentation with all outdoor activities as well as their results. It was a great opportunity for us to share with 45 preschool teachers our results and our progress in learning outside the classroom developed by this European project. The teachers were very interested to see outdoor activity with different themes and locations.
Our flourished “vokamvilia” (a typical Greek plant) outside the main entrance of our school inspired us to create another one inside the school! We followed a long procedure working in small groups in order to pass from one step to the other. We began from cutting small colorful paper into pieces, then we spread them in a plastic surface, we put white glue on the top of them and then we waited for our craft to get dried. The day after, our indoor handmade vokamvilia was ready to get rid of the plastic surface and decorate the window above the entrance!
30 pupils aged 5 years old have decorated all the pages of the calendars with graphic design. Photographs were taken from different outside places where pupils can learn around Marly le Roi. They also learned how to write « BONNE ANNEE » in the different languages of the partners of the project.
Then we went to the post office to buy stamps for Europe. They were very proud to send the calendars to the « teachers who don’t speak french ! »
The first grade students of Don Minzoni primary school together with the lady representative of Infoambiente the regional institution for the environment, and Mr Maccioppi the person responsible for the environment from our Municipality took place in an official and beautiful celebration for trees in our schoolyard. We celebrated “Festa degli Alberi” … the Day of Trees on 21rst of November. We planted a tree, that we named Erasmus and we feel as a green brother!
Christmas time is the most important holiday celebrated in Estonia. The guest of honor in Christmas tradition is of course the Christmas tree. Trees were decorated in homes, schools and kindergartens, on public areas, in the parks and gardens.As Christmas tree is the most inspirational object in children drawings, paintings and handicrafts in December, we decided to make a calendar on this particular topic. Aruküla`s biggest and most important Christmas tree is growing behind the board of local municipality. With our students we take walks to the tree to observe it .We also have Christmas tree growing in Aruküla kindergarten. It`s decorated with Christmas lights and woolen elves made by children. Children just love the tree. The most famous Christmas tree in Estonia stands on Town Hall Square in Tallinn, in the middle of the magical Christmas Market. In December 2018 Tallinn was awarded the title of Best Christmas Market in Europe!
The students of Don Minzoni primary school wrote their Christmas wishes on beautiful postcards from Piacenza. Then they visited the local post office in order to post them and send their wishes to all the partners of our project … in Estonia, Romania, France and Greece. Happy new year to all!
On Wednesday 19th of December we visited the Greek National Opera in Foundation Stavros Niarchos where we watched an opera for kids with title “The Princess and the pea”. It was a unique experience for our students!
Before the winter vacation children, parents and teachers made a team work for the Outdoor education calendar with the most characteristic outdoor cultural education sites of the county’s cultural heritage. It was a new opportunity for them to be next to us working together and the children were very happy and interested. The students’ parents photographed all the places where we had the outdoor activities and after that some of pictures were chosen for each month of the next year 2019 .The children were excited to decorate each frame with specific elements to every season. After a lot of work and fun we managed to have six calendars for each class of the kindergarten. Furthermore, each group will personalize their calendar according to the outdoor activities they will participate in 2019.
5 years old students and teachers of Ottolenghi preprimary school created this outdoor corner in order to send everybody their best wishes for Merry Christmas and happy 2019!!!
5 years old pupils were very happy and proud to discover the postcards received from Piacenza !!
Their teacher translated them and they could admire the different places of the city : churches, statue, squares…
It was very interesting because they started to learn some words in English last year and they can remember it !!!
It will be useful for the next Skype session in January.
The postcards has been read in the classroom then in our Erasmus corner !!
On Thursday, December 6th 2018, 30 children from the big group “Piticot” performed a math activity outdoor where they made gatherings and decreases using natural materials like : pine cones, nuts, chestnuts. Their teachers made a numerical scale with the help of children. All the materials used in the mathematical activity turned into Christmas ornaments with which we decorated the pine from the yard of the kindergarten. The children were very happy because Santa Claus can see by far the pine decorated and so he will find our kindergarten easier to bring them gifts.
After the meeting we had with a local newspaper reporter at our school, an article has been published on ” LIBERTA’ “, our local daily newspaper, to talk about our outdoor activities and our wonderful Erasmus Project ” LEARNING OUTside the classroom IN the EUROPEan nature”.
We have built 4 birdhouses, with recycled material ( plastic bottles…) and natural materials ( leaves, sticks, topsoil…)
Besurica preprimary school also had joined the Project ” ORTO IN CONDOTTA”, in collaboration with SLOW FOOD, International organization that promotes natural food, traditional cooking and livestock characteristic of the local ecosystem, participating in a competition organized by this Association. We were very happy to participate!
On 1rst of December this year, we commemorate the 100th anniversary of the major political event of 1918: the completion of the Romanian national state, made by the union of the Romanian provinces with Romania. On this occasion, 50 students from our kindergarten, (5-6 years old) had a joint activity with 30 students (7-8 years old) from “Nicolae Balcescu” Secondary School. As part of this activity, the children made the map of the country by collage, decorated popular costumes, and with their songs and dances they expressed the joy of being Romanian.
On the 27th of November we visited our woolhouse – cafeteria. It is founded by our local artist Maia Raudkivi who loves specially reusable and natural materials to work with. Main materials are clay, wool and wood. Children made woolen Elfs. Now we know where wool comes from and how it can be red or green. We wraped model to the wool and wash it with soap and warm water. We had to rub the wool very well and gently then it came tight enough. When they got dry we put them noses, mustaches and beards. It was very interesting day in our local woolhouse with the eco artist. Now we have a lot of woolen elves decorating our Christmas tree.
On November 23rd 2018, we had a wonderful day. A group of 29 children, 13 parents and 4 teachers went on a very interesting trip organized by our kindergarten, to the pottery school, “Lut Ars” from Piscu, a small village situated at 45 km from our town, Ploiesti.
Our hosts, Virgil Scripcariu sculptor, one of the most promising contemporary Romanian Sculptors, with exhibitions both in the country and abroad such as countrys like Great Britain, Belgium, Israel, Japan, and so on and his wife, Adriana Scripcariu, expert in art history, have prepared a special learning experience.
First of all, they made a brief introduction to pottery history, an ancient Romanian tradition. Second, they explained us how clay pots were made and how were used in Romanian kitchens many times ago. After that all the children each, received a clay pot which they painted using symbols of nature and they also experienced the technique of making clay pots at the potter’s wheel under the guidance of a potter worker.
The parents and the teachers painted alongside the children, and the final products/ results were almost spectacular. Our students were very pleased and proud about their new skills and also about the result of their efforts. All the pots that they painted will be exposed in the kindergarten at the corner dedicated to the National Day of Romania, celebrated on First of December!
With every chance we prefer to organize outdoor maths lessons in our yard. One day we created a path with a repeating pattern 2 pines 1 signal (pine needle signal that each child created and interpreted differently its own, for example: pine attention in front, attention animal’s nest etc.).
As the motifs strengthen children’s visual memory, we created this particular path to the pine tree of our garden and then we walked it. At the end the students were asked to put it on paper.
Another maths activity connected with our pine tree… we wrote the number 1 using pine needles.
We also organize matching, sorting or pairing activities with coloured paper crafts, or other type of motif with 3 turtle crafts and one plastic bottle cap. Kids really love these math lessons outside the classroom!
We created handmade paper together with our students. We cut used paper in small pieces, we added water, we mixed the pulp with flower petals and small leaves from our garden … and we created a very special, artistic, handmade paper!
On 12th of November, 23 pupils aged 2 ½ and 3 years old went to the park Jean Vitold close to our school. They gathered pine cones, pieces of wood, feathers, moss, leaves, branches… It was the very first time we all went outside therefore many parents came with us to look after children and enjoy the time spend together.
First of all they experienced to look at the park. They looked with frames to isolate few elements such as leaves, moss… they had look with magnifient glasses and mirrors to enlarge their own view.
When they went back to school they organized the natural elements in order to create an artistic personal creation.
Like land art we wanted to have memories of these ephemeral creations so we took photographs in order to organize an exhibition in our kiosque.
On day we shall tell the “Red Riding Hood” Story at kids of nursery near our school … Here how are getting ready!
Our garden is our set: we are good actors! (photo story)
With the robot: how many steps will the wolf made to eat the Red Riding Hood?
The labyrinth in the wood
We drew the story and we made a plastic
The story’s box: into there are the clothes to disguise
At the beginning of autumn we went to Galleana’s Park. It has been a wonderful day because we got lost in the wood. We walked on the paths, we jumped the trunks, we passed under the branches of trees, we made a quick descents …
We have been very adventurous children!
It was a great pleasure for all of us at school to make Christmas decorative crafts inspired by the mother of a student. She proposed the idea to make Christmas ornaments by using pine cones and she has also offered to work with all of our students! She brought all the necessary material and we all enjoyed creating shiny crafts in our Erasmus+ Corner!
Making paper was an awesome experience! All the students and the teachers had the chance to follow the whole procedure of tranforming used sheets of paper to new ones! The activity was led by the artist Giannis Papadopoulos -a well known painter and sculptor- specialising in making paper and creating art with it. Parents were able to watch our recycled paper drying and they were enthousiastic with their kids’ creations.
The 17th of November is the National celebration of Democracy and for that reason we prepared a special decoration in our Erasmus+ corner. Kids painted a big wall paper using the most happy colors and …words of a famous song. They also made few pieces of art combining various tools such as oil pastels, markers and pencils. Our pupils enjoy living in a democratic country
We had an amazing experience this morning at school working with Elena Giuliani, expert of ancient art with natural materials! She is the president of the cooperative ARCHEOTRAVO which is an Archaeological Parc of Travo -open air Museum- near our school and she wrote a short text about this special installation of Land Art.
The reduced forest
Land art experience for installation in the school garden
Themes
– Birth, social motivation and conceptuality of Land art; meaning and places of land art; symbols and meanings
– The concept of nature in Prehistory; art and ritual for the Earth in Prehistory; the Paleolithic “Venuses”; natural materials for art
– Landscape as a canvas of art:
a) the work created on and in the place with the materials it offers, adapting the technique to the materials available
b) inclusion in the natural place of conceptual forms, creations that for purposes must return to the state of nature that generated them, following the life cycle foreseen for all the elements (caducity and non-permanence of the work of art)
Experience
Branches of recovery from a plant destroyed by intense atmospheric events, destined for disposal, which are reused by the pupils. The colors, recalling the colors of the natural elements, cover the stems of the trees of the Forest. The definition of a graphic symbol will be the plan on the garden level where the reduced trees will be installed. The choice of the symbol will take place by voting within the class group.
We are very happy to announce you the installation of our outside Erasmus+ corner !
On 5th of November, 23 students aged 2 1/2 and 3 years old were proud to be the first ones to use it!
They were very happy to stay outside and listen to the instructions for the activities outside. Our outside corner is large enough to welcome one class later they will draw, listen to stories and even organize art exhibitions and all sort of outdoor activities.
On 5th of November 23 pupils aged 2 ½ and 3 years old explored our court yard with magnifying glasses and insects box. They try to find « gendarmes » but as autumn is all ready there, most of the insects were hidden in their house. They started to hibernate.
The door of their house has been open by our assistant to reveal to the pupils a comfortable nest made with dead earwigs, feathers, earth all sort of things necessary for the gendarmes for a long winter.
Pupils were very interested in this activity.
Our love for animals moved us to borrow the museum kit “Painting an animal” from the “Museum of Greek Children’s Art”. Our daily program was enriched with pieces of art and kids were happy to approach the animal kingdom with different ways. We even installed an outdoor museum in our Erasmus+ corner with free etrance to … parents!
The museum kit gave us also a perfect chance to meet our friends in the 1o Primary School Voulas . We arranged an appointment with our colleagues of the 1st grade , Spyridoula Kiskira and Gogo Riga and we visited their schoolyard . All the kids were happy to look at the different paintings and to play games inspired by various animals. We spent a joyful morning travelling with our precious museum kit!
This year all week before Father`s Day on 11th of November we celebrated it in our kindergarten. Some groups made celebration like a concert, some groups took a trip to the museum with fathers, one group made event like a yoga training. Erasmus+ groups decided get more attention to outdoor education and we made the evening adventurous with sports-games and various tasks for children and their dads on huge territory around kindergarten. Later we had a picnic with snacks made by children. One group baked pancakes straight in the cold November rain. It was an evening full of excitement, great team-work between fathers and children and adventurous outdoor experience. Teachers were happy for fine partnership with parents.
From September to November parents and grandparents helped 40 middle-class kindergarten children and 30 large group children made musical instruments from recyclable materials and material from nature: drums in metal or cartoons, balloons and yarns of elastic, trumpets from cartoon tubes, plastic glasses, coloured wire and buttons, shoe box guitars, elastic yarns and coloured paper, plastic boxes filled with rice, clipped between two plastic spoons.
Blessed and proud of what they did, they went out into the yard of the kindergarten and held a real concert to complete the musical collection.
An article issued in the last Marly le Roi’s local magazine (October 2018) relating the visit of the european teachers to our school last June during which they went around the different classrooms, observed the artistic work in progress and saw the pupils at work.
During the visit, the pupils have introduced themselves and sang in english and finally, during a diner party in the school yard, all the french teachers and the european partners had exchange their different views on pedagogical and personnal matters.
On Friday 2nd of November 2018 we had the honor and the joy to welcome at our school the artist Martha Dimitropoulou. With studies in Athens School of Fine Arts, in London Royal College of Art and in Fine Arts of University of East London, and also with many honors and awards in solo shows and group exhibitions in Greece and abroad, she is a visual artist who uses the pine needle as a unit repeated with the same steadiness with which one would choose to make a sculpture of clay or plaster. She shared with us her love about pine needles, material which is neglected by nature, and organized with us and our students a unique workshop! We created castles of pine needles, inspired by the cheerful sand castles that kids make by the sea, combined at the end in a final sculpture, a synthesis of all the small ones, named “The Castle of our Fantasy!” Thank you dear Martha Dimitropoulou for this beautiful day!
In autumn in our playground we have plenty of dead leaves. Pupils like to play with them, but we wanted to give them a second life and teach the children how to take care of their environment.
Some teachers have compost bin in their own building and pupils were very excited to pick up the dried leaves and put them into a bag. Many of them were active helping the teachers.
Meanwhile, they could hear the sounds of the crispy dried leaves and the strong smell of the leaves. Children were very active and they collected more than 4 bags of leaves. Then the leaves were put on a special side waiting to be added to organic’s waste.
In October, 26 pupils aged 5 years old had a bingo game on letters outside the classroom. The teacher gave the name of a letter and pupils had to find it on a small board. They could experiment the pleasure to learn outside in the sun. Their teacher noticed they were quieter and more concentrated on their activity.
As we keep on studying animals with endless enthusiasm we decided to create few arts and crafts using different materials. Cartons, oil crayons, play-doh, colourful wires and pine cones from the pine tree of our garden have been transformed into hedgehogs and cute little mice. Look at them : they love our school and our Erasmus+ program!
On Thursday 18th of October the teachers Maria Cristina Cella and Elena Vermi together with their pupils of Besurica Preprimary school went to Don Minzoni Primary school to meet the pupils of 3rd grade and their teacher Barbara Ferrari, in order to make in common a series of activities in the outdoors according to our Erasmus+ project. Before that we had worked about the parts of tree and we had also read “The very hungry caterpillar” (Eric Carle), because the pupils like to search in the garden for little bugs. During our walk we have collected as usual a lot of materials for studying later in the classroom.
Another mother volunteer came to our school to teach the kids how to make a tasty and healthy sweet using seasonal fruits. The whole procedure took place under the sky where junior chefs got involved in every step: they washed the fruits, they carried all the tools, they cut fruits into small pieces, they smashed ingredients to prepare a crunchy dough and of course they ate all that tasty “fruit soufflé”! Congratulations dear mom; you became a great Erasmus+ volunteer!
In a rainy day last week our pupils had the opportunity to touch seeds and pretend they were farmers. They were happy spreading spinach seeds all over our vegetable garden and talking about delicious recipes full of spinach. You are all invited for a bite of …spinach pie!
Estonia is a rich of big rocks called boulders. Estonian boulders have been formed and moved into Estonia by glacial action during previous ice ages. Boulder are protected by the law. In Aruküla near to the Kindergarten stays Estonian sixth stone on the ground. Circumference 35,2 m and height 6,2 m.
We visited our famous stone with children. We said hello to the stone and felt its texture and temperature with cheeks and hands. We drew its pattern to the paper. We visited that place in the morning and we did some physical exercises there. Also we made some music by knocking smaller stones to the boulder and sang some songs.
We also noticed some moss and lichens growing on the stone. We explored them and the texture of stone with loupes. We discussed differences between moss and lichen and noticed that moss are growing only on the north side of the stone. Also we noticed that there were different small minerals on the boulder.
A sunny autumn day gave us the perfect light and temperature to walk around and discover the flora of our land. We learnt the names of the bushes, the trees and the flowers, we touched them, we smelt them and of course we brought some of them to decorate our classroom. We couldn’t resist painting using few of them as brushes!
What a pleasure to have creative parents at school! Once again they were willing to decorate a piece of our school .We were all surprised at the wonderful result of their team work. They created a beautiful apple tree, an expansion of our garden on the walls of the building of our school! Congratulations dear volunteers!
Friday, on 18 October we visited the County Museum of Natural Sciences, and Botanical Garden.
The trip took place on the Ploiesti and Bucov Park, with a group of 18 students 4 years old, accompanied by 18 parents, 4 teachers and a nurse. We learned many things about the flora and fauna from our region.
First of all, at the Museum of Natural Sciences, we had a lesson with a specialized professor, museum designer “Animals Protected by Our County” and we learned about animal and birds as the otter, fox, squirrel, deer, the owl and the bat. It was a very interesting experience and our host teacher answered to all the children’s questions.
Secondly, we went to the Botanical Garden from Bucov Park. There, we admired and explored different species of trees. Trees that lose their autumn leaves like, shallow, lime, chestnut, poplar, oak and also coniferous as spruce, pine, fir, with green leaves all year round.
At Botanical Garden we created through colour leaves a lot of objects as butterflies, sun and flowers and after this all of us together teachers, children and parents realized an exhibition on the green grass down.
The weather was very beautiful and at the end we enjoyed a healthy picnic with our parents and children.
Looking at the school yard we were surprised by the insects strolling around. Kids had high interest in their way of moving-eating-leaving. A baby turtle was a fabulous opportunity to reach animals’ world! We created turtles by egg cups and we offered her …company. We took them outside ,we prepared a house and we organised a “Turtle-lending service”. Each pupil who took care of the turtle at home was pride to accept a “Turtle medal of animal friendly attitude”. Kids liked also to paint their preferable animal and create 3 dimensional frames. Our animal interest also inspired us to establish an animal museum in the class where parents made a visit!
Don Minzoni primary school and Besurica preprimary school on Friday 12th of October opened their doors to the families of their students and the local community. The students prepared beautiful artworks that were organized in a unique exhibition! We all celebrated!
On Friday the 12th of October we opened the doors of our school to our dear families of our students. They came to help us preparing the soil of our vegetable garden together with the students. Then we presented a theatrical play based on the famous Aesop’s myth ” The wind and the sun” with the significant message that the goodness wins the violence…
On 12th of October, 30 children aged 5 years old expressed they happiness and pride to be involved in an Erasmus + programme.
With their teacher Caroline, they drawn their portrait with black pen on painted paper. The paper was painted with the color of autumn. Finally they went outside at the garden in front of their class to have a photo souvenir of the day.
Early in the afternoon few of some of them prepared the cover of the CD’s box. They had drawn flags and children working and learning outside.
Their smiling faces, the beautiful colors and the warm sun of early October made the afternoon very successful!!!
At the end of September, 30 pupils aged 5 spent a full day in a forest near Rambouillet (Yvelynes). They explore the deep forest and the flora, huge trees (oak, chestnut …) and they even could see quite closely deer, eagle and owl flights, flying above their head.
They even try climbing.
They were very happy to spent a day outside ; It was a good learning outside experience and the best way to feel the nature and to experiment the faune and the flora.
First we had maths lesson with one potato cut in two pieces, two halves that make one potato and three different dimensions of small, medium, large… Then we created stamps and we made artworks with them outdoors near the trees of our garden, that have beautiful autumn colors!
Autumn days were a good occasion of joy for our children and teachers. All kindergarten students went out to Erasmus + corner from the kindergarten courtyard, where they did different didactic activities within the thematic project “The Autumn Riches”. First of all, 18 children of four years performed painting by fingerprinting technology, collage with natural materials, using different working techniques and made the “Orange Carpet”. Secondly, 25 children of four years have painted several pictures of autumn fruits, having as a model the natural fruits, they have observed and tasted. Then, 54 children of five years worked with the theme “Autumn Carpet” – they sorted leaves of different shapes, colors, sizes and combined them creatively, enjoying the results. All the work done was then displayed at our Erasmus + Corner.
Erasmus Days + “#Erasmus Days”, which took place in October 12th-13th 2018, was an important event celebrated in our kindergarten by creating an exhibition of all the works made by children during the last week in the outdoor activities at the Erasmus corner from the kindergarten courtyard within the framework of the “Joy of the Autumn” thematic project. The children have learned and interacted in an attractive educational space where they were able to express their curiosity and creativity and the teachers enjoyed the performance of preschool students in turn. The children were excited and happy to do lessons outside the classroom, interacting better in outdoor educational space and achieving better performance in the learning process. On the other hand, the parents enjoyed the results of the children they admired at the exhibitions made by the teachers.
Also, to celebrate Erasmus + Days, at the invitation received from school inspector Aurel Graur from the Prahova County School Inspectorate, we sent an event to promote our Erasmus + project “LEARNING OUTside the classroom in the EUROPEan NATURE “to the link https://info.erasmusplus.fr/ and we also posted information and photos on the international activities site
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/activitati_internationaleph/files
Members of the Parents’ Association prepared a great surpise for us on October the 5th. They offered us three amazing bouquets expressing their warm feelings and we were very proud of our special profession!
Beginning of October, 23 children aged from 2 1/2 and 3 years old had their first outside learning session ! They had to find natural elements : sticks, gravel, dead leaves, chestnuts, stones… and they tried to create sounds by shaking, banging them… They were very concentrated and happy to work outside!
As we believe in the holistic pedagogical approach of education, we take care of our health, we take care of our environment and we love learning…we prefer healthy food. So with the help of a mother of one of our students, who is specialist in vegan and gluten free diet, we cooked a very delicious cake with natural ingredients, bananas and raisins. The students loved all the activity and especially the delicious taste of the cake, that we enjoyed outdoors at our Erasmus+ corner of our garden!
During September, thirty 5 years old pupils worked outside in small group to the creation of the CD with natural sounds made with natural and elements from nature. Children searched different sounds using different elements : small bottle of milk full to create the sound of heavy rain, small stone to simulate a storm, sticks, woods, dead leaves…even sheet of paper that make the sound of the wind. They even made a small concert !!
To mark the Day of Education, in the fifth day of October the teachers from our kindergarten together with 50 children from the large 5-6 years old group, went out to the yard at the outdoor ERASMUS+ corner and made 3 posters using different work techniques as painting, drawing and application, as well as natural materials gathered from the kindergarten yard.
Also we can say it was an amazing day for everybody and children were very happy because they worked next their teachers under the gentle sun of Autumn
On the 29th of September we celebrated St. Michael’s day in the kindergarten with 11 groups. All events were held outdoors. In Estonian folklore the meaning of this day is that all the crop and vegetables should be picked up for that day and farmers are getting ready for long cold winter. Our teachers made a thematic perfomance for this day (russian folk tale “Turnip”). Children got some new knowledge about vegetables and how healthy is food made of vegetables.
We also opened an exposition where funny vegetables and sculptures made of vegetables and other natural materials was presented in our outdoor classroom. All masterpieces were made by children and their families. Also we tasted different vegetables. It was a funny and healthy day !
We were very happy to celebrate” the day of scholar athletics” in our school; therefore we first became stronger by eating a freshly made fruit salad and afterwards we realised two different kinds of races: walking and giant steps! All our students took part and all of them gained a hand made ‘gold’ medal for their effort. Let’ s move again!
As we collected many pine needles and played under the pine of our garden, we used some small branches for creating artworks. It was lovely to create with natural materials and feel the smell of this beautiful tree!
On 27th of September 170 pupils from 7 classes took part in the event “Clean up the world” cleaning green areas and a park near Don Minzoni school together with LEGAMBIENTE, Italian environmentalist association. This association is connected with 120 countries around the world. It was an excellent activity and a great opportunity to disseminate the aim of our project!
The action was posted on Twitter and Facebook
https://mobile.twitter.com/openroadsmb/status/1046009854584868864?s=19
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2026284011016302&id=100009041693985
Autumn dry leaves, seeds, pine needles, stones and slim branches have all become music instruments in our students hands with their fantasy! They collected them in the schoolyard, they clapped them ,they formed an unusual orchestra and they finally prepared a cover for their first cd!
On Wednesday the 26th 0f September our first parents’ meeting got place in the central hall of our school. Parents were informed about the regulation of the school and the Erasmus program. They were enthusiastic about getting involved in different activities outside in the …European nature and they also look forward to offering a warm welcome to our partners on April 2019! An Erasmus pencil was offered to everyone as a european gift!
On September 20th and 21st, 40 children of 4 years and their teachers attended outside in the kindergarten courtyard and the Erasmus Corner, with attractive teaching activities, enjoying the warm days and natural resources of the kindergarten courtyard: they noticed the chestnut from courtyards, yellowed leaves, picked chestnuts into the baskets and they used for math activity: they counted and matched the corresponding figure, placed at the colored tables at the Erasmus corner. Children also showed joy and interest in the sports games they attended with their teachers.
Friday 21th of September our garden and outdoor classroom were full of music and art activities. We celebrated beginning of autumn with Erasmus+ event.
All 11groups of kindergarten got the opportunity to make some birthday music on instruments from nature. Children created music with stones, with cones, with wooden knobs, with wooden xylophones. All music was recorded and will be shared to our project partners on CD-s.
Also every group got big white bedsheet where they painted with autumn colors by spraying color.
As birthday meal we enjoyed carrot cake and ashberry tea.
It was happy day in Arukyla full of music, art and joy!
As autumn appeared in our school we liked the idea of tasting and also painting autumn fruits. In order to get inspired we first saw few famous paintings . We afterwards brought everything in the outdoors and felt free to make our oun composition of autumn fruits. Our still-life paintings got created and we received congratulations on our pieces of art!
During the first days of the new school year we presented the compost convertor to our new students. At the same time we mixed the ready compost, that was made during the last school year and the vacations, at different corners of our garden. The children observed the dark brown color of the compost and learned that its composition rich in vitamins will help the plants grow up. Now we have to get our compost convertor full of new material!
On the 3rd of September we celebrated beginning of new school year with traditional outdoor activities.
We started with parade around territory of our kindergarten.
Next to main entrance everybody could admire an exhibition of artworks came back from France on subject “Blue like a garden without borders”. After finishing colorful, cheerful and loud walk children got bubble blowers as small presents and some fruits to snack.
We had three trampolines as well to have fun. Children really enjoyed possibility to jump until tiredness.
An art exhibition was opened also for the parents until the evening.
It was great day full of joy and outdoor activities for 174 children.
Marisa Badini from Don Mizoni school as well as her colleagues from Piacenza organize meetings and present our project to the educational teams of their schools. They also post articles on different social media, Twitter, eTwinning etc disseminating the ideas of Outdoor Learning.
Aruküla kindergarten courtyard has an insect-gallery since this spring, providing shelter to various insects who have found their way there. The insect hotel was built by children and their teachers. For building were used cones, hay, plants, branches, etc.
The gallery is mostly populated by ants and ladybugs. When children find an insect, they always want to move it to the hotel right away.
We use the hotel to show children how the insects live. To give a better view we use magnifying glass. Children can visit the insect-gallery all year round, to see whether the insects are sleeping or moving around. Visiting the hotel is very interesting for children and always gives them opportunity to discover something new about the insects.
Interesting moment of continuity between the 4-year section of Besurica children’s school and the 3rd grade of the D.Minzoni primary school “en plain air”, in the local park, close to the two schools, where children can exchange impressions, questions … on the outdoor learning activities, experimented in the current academic year, with the Erasmus Plus project LEARNING OUTside THE classroom in the EUROPEAN nature!
On June 2018 Don Minzoni Primary school pupils visited the Park of River Trebbia near Piacenza in order to explore the natural environment. The river Trebbia originates in the Ligurian Apennine, and after crossing the upper and middle Piacentino Apennine it reaches the first hills where the regional River Park begins. There the pupils observed the flora, the animals and the stones on the river banks. It was a great exploration!
On the 2nd of July 2018 45 children aged 3 to 5 went to the park near the school to spend a day outdoor ! They learned outside the classrroom in the nature different sport games, then we all had a pic nic where all the parents were welcomed. Some came just for one hour, some stood with us to spend a very hot day in the refresing park of Marly le Roi in the shadow of huge trees!!!
Everybody children, parents, teachers and assistants were very happy to spend a day outside having a healthy pic nic !
During the months of May and June children learnt the basic traffic rules. They learnt how to cycle on right side of the road, some of the main sign posts important for the safety, and to stop at the traffic light. We used real sign post and real traffics light.
And at the beginning of July they passed an exam to check if they remembered what they have learnt. Those who successfully passed the exam received a diploma depending of their level. They were very proud of it!
On June 15th, the official end date of the school year, the big class “Iepurasii” celebrated their festivity. The event had the following parts:
-dances, where the children wore custom t-shirts with their colleagues’ signatures;
-the fashion parade, where the children showed their beautiful outfits;
-songs and poems about “Good-bye kindergarten”;
-the moment when the children offered flowers to their teachers and to the head teacher;
-the closing ceremony, where children received toques, diplomas, promotional albums, DVDs with photos from kindergarten and books with a short teachers’ message.
On Saturday 23rd of June all the families of the school were invited to come to the open gates. They could visit the exhibition of the works realized by the pupils on the different projects: Erasmus + project, project on the emotions, and our project linked with the statues of the park of Versailles.
During the morning parents, educational adviser and representative of parish council could see the presentation of our Erasmus project on « Learning outside in the nature » and the models of our playground and the park of Marly le Roi. All the children of the school sang and realized a « Flash mob » then parents were invited to join the dance!
This festive morning was followed by a fair! Everyone was very happy to celebrate the end of the school year!
The last day of our school year a mother of one of our students, who is English teacher, together with one of her colleagues teachers visited our school for a special English lesson! They taught our students English songs and played with them games in English with subject colors, saying Hello and Goodbye…
The monkey puppet that they presented was an enthusiastic surprise for the kids!
On Wednesday, 20 June 2018, we organized the Teachers’ Council in our kindergarten with the participation of 16 teachers, where it was a dissemination activity for the Training and Teaching event held in Saint Germain en Laye, France. The two teachers who participated in the event, Mihaela and Ana-Maria, shared their wonderful experiences that lived there during 5-9 June 2018, highlighting the new pedagogical methods learned, oriented towards transdisciplinarity and which we can successfully apply in our future didactic activities.
On Tuesday 12nd of June the older students of 1 Nipiagogeio Voulas who will go to the primary school next September, visited 1rst Primary school of Voula in our neighborhood. The two classes of 1rst grade welcomed us and presented their classrooms and their yard. We offered rucksacks with the logo of our project and we discussed our cooperation. Our students felt very proud and old enough to continue to the next step of education, so our goal for easy transition from preprimary to primary school was achieved.
The visit of Monet gardens in Giverny during our first Training event in France gave to teachers material and inspiration for artistic activities with students. So, with our return back to school the students admired the photos and the books with the art of the impressionist painter Claude Monet, together with all the photos and the material brought from the training event. The students expressed themselves artistically with joy!
During the 1st training event in France, the meeting of dissemination and closure of two others Erasmus + projects coordonated by the association « Paysage et patrimoine sans frontière » took place in Saint Germain en Laye. On Friday the 8th of June a blue carpet was rolled out, artistic concept created by the artist Aline Rutily. The installation of this blue carpet was made with a lot of blue squares created by the association, the partners and friends in relation with the color blue and also partners of our project. It symbolized a blue path created by people in relation with the association.
Meanwhile an exhibition on blue mail art was inaugurated for the closure of another Erasmus + project : Blue like a garden without borders. A contest was organized with several prices.
And the winner is ?… Our partner the Italian Don Minzoni school from Piacenza !!!
Outside again we admired the blue garden created by Aline Rutily…
All the European teachers of our team in front of the beautiful blue garden!
We created with our students 12 blue squares in order to participate in the installation of blue carpet of the European project “Chemins du blue” that was presented during our training event in Saint Germain en Laye France. Our blue squares were made with painting and collage of beautiful images from different Greek islands.
On the 5th of June we celebrated the Environment Day by wearing green t-shirts and doing various activities: we gathered the garbage from the kindergarten yard, we talked about how to save the Environment , we made mock-ups with the message “Save the forest / water and the living creatures”, drawings about a healthy environment , the tree of the good advices and made toys from recyclable materials. The children were very involved.
In May we have long tradition to go for hiking. Very often hiking destinations can be homeyards of our students and we are always welcomed warmly .
This spring we decided to ask parents come with us as one big happy team. Different groups had different quantity of cooperative parents, but breavest of them were with us.
Depending on the age of the children, groups had different trails. Everybody enjoyed good combination of great weather, physical activity and fine company in European nature!
Celebrating the World Environment Day in our schoolyard was a great opportunity for the whole school team to disseminate all our projects, thoughts and concerns about protecting nature. Having as central core “marine litter”‘ we prepared a story where all the kids needed to find a solution to save the life of sea animals against plastic bags . Fish, crabs, plastic bags, doctors, nurses, sea and scuba divers were presented in front of our hand made scenery and of course in front of an enthusiastic audience! All the pupils got a warm applause and a diploma for being a member of our Erasmus+ Team!
From the 6th to the 8th of June 2018 we had our first training event in Saint Germain en Laye France.
The partners participated to an artistic workshop proposed by the artist Aline Rutily from the Association Paysage et patrimoine sans frontière. We created poem and illustrated it on a note book with watercolorable oil pastel and pencils.
Then we went to Versailles to visit the gardens and the parc of the castle of Louis XIV.
The following morning our coordinator Vassiliki Anagnostou presented our Erasmus + project in front of 50 people coming from Portugal, Spain, Italy, Romania and France.
A cruise on the river Seine was a very good way to learn more about the time of impressionnistes painters and the way they lived.
On Friday morning all the partners went to visit the preprimary school Saint Exupéry in Marly le Roi. Children presented themselves in English, they sang songs for the partners.
Then we all had a trip to Giverny to visit the house and gardens of the impressionniste painter Claude Monet.
We ended this first training event in the Blue garden created by the artist Aline Rutily.
“The 100th anniversary of the Great Unification of Romania”
Tuesday, May 29 th 2018, all kindergarten staff- children, teachers and parents, met to celebrate the big historical event of the year 2018 – The 100th Anniversary of the Great Unification of Romania, within the action we prepare every year- “The kindergarten open gates“.
The children worked in collaboration with their parents, under the supervision of the teachers. They prepared some of handmade products about Romania as: flags, maps, mock-up with children silhouettes, souvenirs.
It was a great celebration and everybody enjoy it!
On Monday 28th of May 44 children went to visit the park of Marly le Roi. In this park Louis XIV had his week-ends castle !! The castle was destroyed after the French Revolution.
Children had to found statues, details of statues, they have seen pictures from impressionnists painters.
Then they tried to do like the statues !
Every student prepared his/her artistic poster of our project, on which we glued his face photo under the tree of our logo. So we created personalized posters for every happy student who participates in LEARNING OUTside the classroom IN the EUROPEan nature for all our families! We also added the main priorities of our project at the backside of the poster, in order to diffuse the ideas of our partnership. At the day of our theatrical play with environmental message for our sea, when all the families and friends of our students visited our school, we organized an exhibition of all the beautiful posters. In addition we informed more of 150 visitors of our neighborhood about the progress of the implementation of our Erasmus+ project and we thanked all the parents and grand parents who were happy to participate in many project’s activities!
On the 25th of May 22 children went to Saint Germain en Laye to discover the artistic blue garden created by the artist Aline Rutily. They had a sensorial approach : they could touch and smell the leaves of lavender, they could admire all the bleu flowers. They used mirrors to see the reflects, they used frames to focus on details, they used kaleïdoscopes to multiply the image.
Then with bleu wax chalk and color pencils they draw the flowers the blue garden.
At the end of this morning pupils spent few times in the children’s department of the library where they could see books on flowers, garden…
Last Friday took place our traditional outdoor event – spring day of sport activities.
On 25th May all groups got together in front of main entrance and we started to warm up for sport under guidance of sport-teacher Angelina with cheerful music.
All groups, about 200 children in age 1.5-7years, competed in running 20m or 30m, throwing a sand-bag far as possible, in long jump.
We finished sporty day with small presents to groups, with golden medals made of chocolate to each child and with happy dances.
It was beautiful day full of sunshine and sport for everybody!
A few days ago we sent by post letters – cards of the phrase LEARNING OUT IN NATURE in order to participate in the exposition of art postal with the title ” Bleu comme un jardin sans frontière “, that will be organized next June in Saint Germain en Laye in France during the Training event of our project. On every letter – card are written words translated in all the languages of the project, for example on letter L … we wrote Life, ζωή, viata, elu, vie, vita … Every letter – card is travelling separately as a card postal transferring the message to all the intermediate stations on the route from 1 Nipiagogeio Voulas to France.
Life Expanding Adventure Reality Nature Independence New Game
Out Unique Team
International Nurture
Neighborhood Action Travel Universe Recycling Emotions
The exposition is organized by the artist Aline Rutily from the association Paysage et Patrimoine sans frontière, who is responsible for the Training Event of all the partners.
Last week the children visited an animal farm in the vicinity of Bucharest, where the children met domestic animals and birds, but also some wild animals. They assisted in milking the cow and tossing the ponies. The children were accompanied by their parents and we all together spent a day full of informations and relaxion at the same time.
Vermeer’s “Girl with the Pearl Earring” had fascinated our students and so we decided to make copies of it by using a real model! A student -aged 4- stood still for over 15’ so that her classmates could paint her. When the paintings were dried we transformed them to vases simply by folding the cardboards. At the end we added few flowers from our garden. Fresh and colorful art!
Few days ago we celebrated Mothers Day with a outdoor concert and a picnic for all the families of our kindergarten.
Weather was great and 11 groups, all together around 200 students, gave great perfomances of classical estonian children songs to their parents. The youngest students performed two baby-dances.
After that children congratulated their moms with hand-made gifts and postcards.
All parents and children could enjoy great weather and tasty snacks also made by students.
It was happy day full of music, gratitude to mothers and fine food in good company.
All the children of our school went to visit the glyptotheque in Versailles. Following this visit they created statues, decorated boxes… All the artistic produvtions were presented in an historical place near Versailles.
47 children aged 4 to 6 years old went to visit the exhibition showing around 350 art works made students from all the department! They could admire their own production among others!
On 15th of May 25 3 years old children went to an excursion to learn how to plant. They can touch soil, they learn the best way to plant seeds of coriander, sunflowers. For the students it was a great opportunity to see green houses. They went back to school with a lot of pots with seeds, flowers for the mothers and our playground.
After replanting pansy in the garden and around trees, they had to water. They like so much thisactivity that they are able to queue for a long time to wait for the watering can !!
Then one colleague had to weed the garden.
As we are admirers of art and nature, we organised an excursion to the National Glyptotheque which combines great sculptures in peaceful gardens. Accompanied by some mothers-volunteers and a guide, our pupils had the chance to discover, observe and also.. pretend to be different sculptures. A picnic and few games under the trees completed our unique day in the …Athenian Nature!
Our municipality kindly plow the earth around the trees in order to allow pupils to plant seeds of flowers.
On the 11th of May we planted different seeds to make a wild garden » with poppies…
After planting pupils had to water the earth. Of course they were very happy to water the future garden and a bit difficult for the youngest !
As we are having very hot days children watered the vegetable garden during the playtime. They are always very proud to take care of their garden and flowers !
Before our Easter holidays kids of Saint Joseph have participated in an experiential program titled “Herbs and plants” , where they were happy to discover the treasures of nature.
Firstly, we’ve learnt about planting the crops and drying the herbs. Then we cleaned the garden from the wild grass and watered it. After the hard work kids became farmers and fresh vegetables were gathered from the garden and ended in our plates ready to be eaten!! Finally, the most exciting thing was when kids fed the animals of the farm and dyed the eggs that they had previously collected from the chicken!!
Tuesday, on May 8 th, was another great day spent with our students outside the kindergarten. We went to visit the Rescue Station in Ploiesti, where a large medical team of nurses and volunteers taught the kids some resuscitation exercises on their own dolls. Also the children were invited to climb into the Rescue car and noticed the entire equipment, but also its role. In our response to the end of the visit to the Rescue Station we gave an interview to a local television in which we presented the purpose of our partnership.
This spring from 26th March to 6th April an exhibition called “Old to new” took place in Aruküla Kindergarten.
With great creativity children made various things with their parents from different reusable materials. Something new was made from something old. They used egg chells, food packs, peaces of old furniture etc.
Children were very happy doing this with their parents and proudly introduced their masterpieces. Also in groups we made mostly easter decorations for the exhibition.
Lots of parents was visiting exhibition and taking photos during several days.
An exhibition was organized in good purposes – Less waste, more fun and lets keep the planet clean!
The approach of art became a fascinating experience for our pupils. The Museum kit “Learning to respect the environment, through Art” that we had borrowed from the “Museum of Greek Children’s Art” offered us a variery of pictures showing paintings and sculptures. We exposed most of the pictures in our Erasmus+ Corner and kids asked to be sculptors and make sculptures using their bodies! Wonderful sculptures appeared in the schoolyard…Coming inside they choose their favorite pictures and they composed a story. They decided to present their story , so they got dressed up as real actors. Making drawings and collage could not be missing…we prepared a ‘buffet’ full of any kind of different elements and kids were happy to create crafts!
As beautiful spring has arrived to Aruküla, we decided to create some art in open air with natural materials to celebrate it.
Children collected all necessary materials, flowers, leaves, small stones, branches, into small baskets. With thick glue students created art-works as they wanted it to be.
An exhibition of done artworks was set up for parents and our young artists got many-many compliments about their creativity!
Lots of sun, happiness and positive emotions was in this beautiful spring day in Aruküla Kindergarten!
Great excursion in open air, with my children today!
Nice activities at ” Fattoria La Bosana”, on hills near Piacenza,in very outside atmosphere!!!
Horseback riding tour, pic nic on the garden and practical activities about the horses,
very nice experience also for teachers!!!
Hello, Spring! is an educational activity connecting outdoor studies with using modern ICT applications. It has run since 1994 and in 2018 there were about 7000 participating students from 400 educational institutions – schools and kindergartens from all over Estonia.
Students will observe changes that take place in the Nature during spring. They will study migratory bird and plant species – all together 35 common indicator species – and learn to identify them in nature – plants by appearance and flowering, birds by song and appearance etc. We have posters in our groups with photos of these species. Finding a new sign of spring, we send good message all over Estonia – spring has arrived to Aruküla!
A seminar was organized by the Gradinita cu Program Prelungit No 21 Ploiesti for the promotion of the activities and results of the LEARNING OUTside the classroom project IN the EUROPEan Nature on 25th of April 2018.
The representative of the Romanian Government, in the person of the prefect of Prahova County, the representative of the Prahova County Council, the school inspectors from Prahova County School Inspectorate who participated in the activity congratulated the project coordinator and all the European partners for presentations and appreciated their efforts to extend relevant educational approaches – an external educational space appropriate to the age of the target group, to ensure successful opportunities for all students.
The Romanian teachers who participated in the seminar gave positive feedback after seeing the project team presentations and appreciated: the diversity of outdoor teaching activities, students’ performance reflected in the artwork, scientific experiments, positive and proactive attitudes of teachers and their students.
The April 25th event organized by Gradinita cu Program Prelungit 21 Ploiesti and the project coordinator were presented and promoted in the online PH online newspaper :
First day, April 25th
– visiting the kindergarten;
– artistic manifestations of children in the kindergarten courtyard – dances, karate;
– didactic activities at the ERASMUS corner outdoor practice activity and environmental experimentation activity, cloud formation, conducted by children aged 4-5 and their teachers;
– a seminar to promote the project’s activities and results, presentations of the members of the countries participating in the project with the participation of the representative of the Romanian Government in the person of the Prefect of Prahova County, the representative of the Prahova County Council, the school inspectors for early education from Prahova County School Inspectorate, the kindergarten headmasters from the county, and the representative of the parents’ kindergarten association, about 50 people.
The second day, April 26th
– organizing a picnic in the Bucov Park near Ploiesti with the participation of 30 children of 5-6 years, 15 parents, professors, European participants;
– children’s artistic manifestations on the Alley writers in Bucov park area;
– visit to the Palace of Parliament building in Bucharest.
The third day, April 27th
– visit to secondary school Nicolae Balcescu – promotion of the project;
– visit to Kindergarten with Extended Program No 23 – educational outdoor musical activity, outdoor project promotion;
– visit to the Ploiesti Clock Museum;
– the festive closing of the transnational meeting in Romania.
The 2nd transnational meeting of our great Erasmus+ team takes now place in Ploiesti, Romania. All the partners -from Romania, Greece, France, Estonia and Italy- presented their series of activities realized outside the classroom in the european nature! The Romanian team achieved the organization of the 1st day of the meeting in an excellent way. Thank you Toba Mihaela Carmen -Director of the school- and Albu Iuliana-Ana!!!
We received invitations with the map of Romania for the second transnational meeting of our partnership in Ploiesti Romania from 25th till 27th of April 2018. Our partners there prepared nice postcards to invite us and we are looking forward meeting them!
Inspired by the land artists Nils Udo, Andy Goldsworthy, Robert Smithson we programmed an outdoor excursion. The wonderful landscape of “Akti Vouliagmenis” (a beach near our school) offered us great points of interest to observe. Kids first admired the elegant statues in small size standing in the neat gardens by the sea and then they reproduced them with their bodies! Their creativity pushed them to make their own sculpture -a fish- using pieces they found around: stones, small branches, sea shells, leaves.
Coming back to school their inspiration guided them to gather diverse spam objects in an “empty” corner of our garden and decorate it with a brand-new sculpture. The result was … a unique lighthouse with a small cage on the top!!!
After our easter holidays kids were happy to discover changes in the school garden. We made a tour all around the garden and they asked me to take photos of all these different images : fresh new camomile, leaves, flowers and high tall wheat! My proposition to give them my cell phone so that they would become photographers, appeared as a very appealing idea! Our tour ended up by making artistic compositions using natural elements found around the garden and presented in a hula hoop frame.
This was another happy day for our pupils. It was a nice sunny day and we could organize several sport games outside the classroom such as bowls , ball games and sporting competitions. We enjoyed very much and the weather was our friend creating a pleasant atmosphere in kindergarten courtyard.
During these months we worked on emotions we feel when we are outside the classroom in the open air. We worked on the relationship between emotion, color and form inspired by great painters!
Wednesday 4th of April teachers and assistants organized a big hunting for Easter chocolates.
Few days ago each pupil has decorated egg with decorative graphics, or a rabbit, chick and carrot. In which are some pieces of chocolate . Then around 90 children came outside in the playground for a huge Easter hunting!
Spring hasn’t arrived to Aruküla yet as you can see from the first photo and we decided to experiment with natural materials indoor. There were two experiments.
First one was called “Thirsty celery”. We did taste celery at first and then we put three branches into three differently coloured water. After a few days we could see how differently coloured liquid had changed celery. The celery looked best in a clear water.
Second experiment was very traditional for Estonians. We do this in the beginning of spring when we feel a need to see some green leaves after a long cold dark winter as symbol of new beginning in nature. We do not eat these leaves, we bring them into a warm room and we observe how leaves start to grow from the buds.
To celebrate the arrival of spring children plant seeds in pots. When the little plants had grown up we replant then in our inside vegetable garden. Pupils planted : radish, cherry tomatoes, lettuce, green beans and zucchini !!
Then planted seeds in our outside vegetable garden. This summer we will have lots of flowers to attract butterflies !! and at that time there is no need to water, we have lot of rain !!
40 pupils aged 3 to 5 years old went to Versailles to see a very special place. It was royal stables converted to hospital for the statues which used to decorate the parc. The old statues are repaired and some times craftmen make copies and they keep the old one inside and decorate the parc with new statues !
Children were very impressed !
Last Friday, on 30th April 2018, has been a special event for our kindergarten. The teachers and the children with their parents, have participated in the National Contest “Made for Europe” 2018, county level, together with all the other schools from Prahova County involved in the European projects. For our team it was an opportunity to present our Erasmus + project and the children were happy to present traditional and international dances. Greetings to all from Romania!
Happy Easter from all the happy bunnies of our school!
The experiments done with the …power of magnets were a great discovery for our pupils. They played with them, they became magnets themselves, they used them to appeal metal objects, they painted on sheets of magnet and of course they designed the experiment as real scientists!
On Monday the 26th of March we visited the 4th Primary School Voulas where we spent few hours with the 1st grade pupils and their teachers. First we made a sightseeing tour around the garden and the schoolyard where the director Mrs Alex. Markopoulou “introduced” us different trees and bushes. Coming inside we played a game with the names of the trees and the leaves and then Mrs Popi Papakonstantinou, Mr Antonis Skellas and Mrs Tonia Pitsarou presented a serie of impressive experiments using water, air, fire,glass and a lot of enthusiasm and joy! It was a unique day where a new friendship began!
The 25th of March is a significant celebration for Greece having national and religious content. At school there were decorative crafts, songs, theatrical acts and also a parade in the yard, where parents gave us a round of applause!
Shiny sun gave us the opportunity to play with light and shadow in every corner inside and outside our school. The movement of arms and bodies offered every kind of size and shape and a happy decoration next to the main entrance between the bushes. Small pieces of carton became shadow puppets and the kids were happy to improvise short stories and present them to their classmates.
At the beginning of the week we have been continuing the spring activities with big children – 6 years old, in the kindergarten yard. We have been cutting the barren branches, we covered the trees with chalk, to keep them safe from the insects. Also we have been putting around them down on the ground chalked stones. Everybody sang the beautiful song to the trees “Little tree, little tree I’m taking care of you”.
Our class met class II B of Don Minzoni Primary school many times to find out how to realize a model. First we made inspection outside to take a look at the building and the surrounding area. Than we focused on what we needed as regards materials and technics.
We were divided into four groups, each having a task to make the garden fence, the school building, the green area and the other finishing touches.
We visited with our students a didactic farm in our area, where we watched and fed the animals, we observed the plants and the trees, we participated in many outdoor activities and in the afternoon we went on spending our day walking through the woods.
For over a week we realised different experiments with WATER. Does it flow? Does it have a colour or a smell? Is it transparent?Can we catch it? What happens when it is boiled? Which things float and which do they sink? Kids got answers for their questions by playing with water in the open air. They explored water by using different objects – a pot, strainers in different sizes, funnels, pins,tissue,pen,cotton e.t.c- and of course their hands! They enjoyed a ‘running’ game by carrying a plastic glass full of water and they finally achieved to write the word “ΝΕΡΟ” (water in greek) with clothespins hung in a rope! We really like WATER!
We found a really creative way to teach colours in english through art and nature. Having observed trees in the outdoors ,our pupils came inside to let their fantasy free to create trees of colours. Aren’t they wonderful?
It was a great pleasure to spend few hours at school with the most famous Greek oral storyteller Mrs. Sasa Voulgari. She narrated traditional stories and meanwhile she played different musical instruments brought from all over the world!
The experiment was easy to practice outside the classroom in our Erasmus+ Corner. We chose some white flowers and we put them in three different glasses filled with coloured water. We wrote down in a paper the suggestions of the kids :a)The flowers will remain white, b)the flowers will absorb water which will change their colour. It took us 5 days of observation to corfim suggestion (b). The final conclusion was drawn by the kids in their sheets of paper as professionals do!
We had snow for 3 days and that was really an extraordinary event for us! The children played with the snow in school’s garden, they made the snow-men and played snowballs. Such wonderful days!
In the classroom we explored the cat’s world and 13 February we became stray cats and we sang our songs around our quarter!
The 4 and 5 years old children discovered their own shadows and those made with our mascot (Little Wolf) or the small horse from our miniature farm.
Besides our european project we also have a project on statues from the parc of Versailles, so the pupils trained themselves to do the statues and they looked at the shadow they made.
Spring is around the corner so we decided to plant seeds.We all enjoyed the process so much! The little ones were fascinated by the tucking of the seeds in the soil and the watering. Now we need to be patient. Everybody is looking forward to the moment the first leaves will pop up through the soil.
The making of our poster of “The secrets of healthy and happy children”.
The 3 and 4 years old children have drawn the activities they liked on small leaves. The 4 years old drawn different outside activities related with our Erasmus + project , then every pupil explain in their own words which activities they prefer.
This poster has been settled at the entrance of the classroom so the parents can have a look at it and children can show and explain what they have done.
In France at last spring is coming!! Children went in the playground to look after insects and what we call “policeman”!!
The latin name of this insect is Pyrrhocoris apterus. They live on the tree trunk and they love the heat of the sun. At the beginning of spring they go outside in cluster tightly pressed against each other.
To observe the pupils had magnifying glasses and box for entomology.
Thursday, 15 March 2018, in a sunny and warmy spring`s day, 56 children (4-5 years old) with 6 teachers went out in the yard to plant flowers and vegetables seeds. We keep an eye on and note the phases of their growing.
As spring appeared we had long and short conversations about animals that wake up after their wintertime sleep.Kids were enthousiastic talking about snakes and snails! We observed them, we found some information at the internet , we made arts and crafts, we took them outside for a stroll(!) and of course we played with them!
Our pupils’ surprise was unspeakable when firemen rung the bell of our school .Their joy became even stronger when the fire truck parked outside the school yard and all the kids had the opportunity to become firemen by wearing helmets and using the appropriate equipments! The whole activity finished by writting down the number for emergency calls to the fire station “199”and making it hung to their hands to take it home.
In January and February we participated in the nationwide recycling campaign for Estonian schools and kindergartens. During the campaign period, 4-5years children and their parents collected empty batteries and empty candle covers that are made of aluminum to recycle them. We collected over 400 empty batteries and over 800 aluminium covers. Also we made a poster explaining why is necessary to classify garbage.
In addition we made promises to the nature:
1. We will not throw garbage on the ground!
2. We will not throw garbage in the water!
3. We will classify garbage!
4. We will grow new plants !
5. We promise not to waste electricity !
All our class members signed these promises .
On March the 7th a seminar for teachers took place in our school dedicated to our Erasmus+ program. 35 teachers from primary and pre-primary schools participated in our sight-seeing outside and in our digital presentations inside. We had the honour to welcome Mr A. Mandrikas, School Counselor of Primary Education and Miss V.Vorylla, Co-ordinator of Environmental Education for Pre-Primary Education of East Attica and share with all of them the great experience of the program. All the participants received gifts illustrated by the logo of our Erasmus+ program. It was an exceptionnal evening!
Next to our school there are two parks: Parco della Galleana and Parco di Montecucco. During the first months of the year we often went to the Parco della Galleana to find the right and necessary materials to buid a model and make Christmas decorations.
We digged a garden thanks to the aid of parents and grandparents and we trasformed it in a vegetable garden. There we met new friends: the earthworms and we watched them close.
We planted several kinds of cereals, sunflowers and spring onions. In a few months we will sow other plants and when we harvest them, we could even cook them.
Scuola Don Minzoni ‘in Europa’, l’Erasmus parte dall’infanzia
Don Minzoni: Erasmus projects in kindergarten
The Don Minzoni school of Piacenza opens the doors to the internationalization of teaching and is the first in the city to participate in Erasmus projects for children and to obtain important European awards.
‘We started this adventure by involving, for the first time, also the kindergarten in an Erasmus K1 project (‘ Open roads to Europe ‘, in partnership with a Spanish school and a Romanian school), aimed at teaching English language to the children of the maternal and to develop new methodologies related to the theme of inclusion ‘, says Elisabetta Corvi, teacher of the Eighth Circle of Piacenza, who adds:’ The project allowed to start important synergies with other European schools, allowing us teachers to start cultural exchanges with other organizations, opening a window on Europe to children.
Internationalization also involved the Eighth Circle of Piacenza primary school which – in early March – won the international eTwinning award in Copenhagen, – the platform that promotes twinning between European schools in the field of educational innovation – with the project European ‘Out of the box’. The Don Minzoni school has worked in a team with two European schools (one Spanish and one Romanian) and has received an important recognition in terms of creative writing and use of technologies in narrative function, developing storytelling skills in children thanks to the use of different forms of expression (writing in English, images and making videos). The project – curated by the teachers Marisa Badini and Ilenia Brancato – won last November also the national eTwinning award 2017, reaching among the ten finalists.
The pride of the Eighth Circolo di Piacenza is also the participation in the ‘Computational Thinking and Coding’ training course which was held recently in Finland: ‘We are one of the seven Italian schools involved in the coding project together with Finland, Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Denmark and Estonia ‘, explains Elisabetta Corvi, who has developed (with the project to introduce robotics’ Wild life story with bee-bots ‘) the theme of disability as a resource,’ reasoning with the partners of Finland and Norway on inclusion as an enrichment for each school ‘. Last September – moreover – the Don Minzoni school was involved in three other Erasmus K2 projects, adding another piece to the internationalization: ‘Thanks to the support of the manager Sabrina Mantini, we have developed – together with the teachers Marisa Badini, Carmela Simone and Cristina Cella – three innovative projects in partnership with other European schools. The first (‘Mystery of History’) represents a journey into the history and cultural roots of Italy, Croatia and Slovenia, involving the primary classes in the discovery of national and international historical and artistic heritage, ‘added teacher Elisabetta Corvi, who he then recalled the participation in the project (‘Bilingual citizenship education’) focused on citizenship skills and implemented in partnership with Poland and Spain. The third project involving all kindergartens and schools of the Circle (Learning outside the classroom in the European nature) concerns the methodologies of open learning, and also involves Estonia, France, Romania, Greece. The Eighth Circle of Piacenza will represent Italy and will host – in June 2019 – the conclusion of the work: ‘We have already participated in a first planning meeting in Estonia followed by a meeting in Romania (next April) and a workshop in France (Gardens of Versailles) in June. In autumn – concludes Elisabetta Corvi – we will be in Greece for another workshop that will address the issue of active citizenship since childhood for the recovery of outdoor spaces in which to grow in respect of the other and the environment.
“How do we feel when we stay outside in the open air?” This question helped us to collect our thoughts and feelings and write them down in a poster. “I feel well”, “I enjoy playing in the yard”, “I like collecting flowers”, “I like fresh air”, “I like the sun”…..Beautiful thoughts, warm feelings in the outdoors.
Talking about the secrets of a healthy student with our pupils, we ended up with a poster made with their photos revealing healthy habits! Each photo has a short phrase presented as kids’ words such as: we eat healthy food, we drink water, we play, we do gymnastics, we feed birds, we are clean, we take care of our body,we relax…Can you …keep a secret?
It was very unusual to have such a thick snow in Marly le Roi and children were so happy and excited to play in the ground.
They made snowball fight, they even sleded !! They experienced that snow can be very cold and even icy !!! They discovered were the snow is coming from and why it’s falling !!
Tuesday March the 6th , our children have performed outdoor activities and completed the first page of the naturalist scientistics’ notebook. They artisically expressed through painting, the separation of the winter season and the desire to come spring, hoping it will be the last snow. They also learnt the enviromental knowledge activity about the water circuit in nature and conducted experiments on the subject.They mesured and recorded in parallel the melting time of the snow brought in the classroom.
On the 1st of March we were happy to welcome spring by singing traditional songs in the outdoors. Accompanied by a mother who studies traditional music and a musician who plays “kanonaki” (greek instrument) we enjoyed music under the sunny sky!
The Republic of Estonia celebrated its 100th anniversary of independence on February 24, 2018.
By lucky chance our kindergarten was opened exactly the same day in 1983, so we also celebrated 35 years of Aruküla kindergarten.
Various events took place all week:
On Monday we opened an exhibition of historical toys and books collected from parents and grandparents.
On Tuesday we had picnic event in our outdoor classroom, where we were singing and talking about our beloved homeland Estonia and our kindergarten. Hot sausages straight from the grill were real hit among children on a cold winter day.
On Wednesday we had a magician presenting tricks for children.Lots of surprises and real fun!
On Thursday we were drawing in groups and later these drawings were sent to presidental drawing competition “My present to Estonia”.
On Friday we watched a movie made by our enthusiastic teachers. In the movie children and kindergarten teachers were answering questions and analyzed life in Estonia and in our kindergarten.
The children played with the snow in our garden and then drew their play and expressed their joyful feelings.
The experience of visiting the virtual exhibition “Van Gogh Alive” touched our artistic feelings and moved us to our Erasmus+ Corner in the schoolyard. There, our students reproduced their favorite Van Gogh’s paintings. We were all enthousiastic to install an open-air exhibition. This unique artistic installation stayed open to the …audience ’till the end of the school day, gaining a lot of warm comments!
The poster with the theme “Secrets of a healthy student who loves outdoor learning” was made in February by six-year-old students in our kindergarten. They have expressed their artistic ideas through drawing, painting and applications that have illustrated the theme in the four seasons of the year with their favorite outdoor activities and games. At the end of their work, joy and delight were read on their faces for what they had done.
We organized maths outside our classroom with big number labels, symbols and our bodies. While one student was counting, making the correct calculations and moving his friends, the rest of the team was watching and checking from a higher level up on the bench of our yard. The students liked a lot this different maths lesson!
We are happy to have four seasons in Estonia. Every season has its own face. Our poster illustrates our healthy activities during different seasons. Every season awaited by children and brings us different knowledge about nature. We would like to introduce you to our favorite activities during different seasons – winters snow fun, springs nature blooming, summers time swimming and falls vegetable fun. All these activities are presented on our beautiful poster!
On the occasion of Kyoto protocol birthday, Radio 2 National Radio organized a symbolic walk “to the moon”! “M ILLUMINO DI MENO” everyone could give steps. Our school , with about 106 children, gived 150000 steps!!! We went, under the sleet, to the public park, turning off all the schools lights!!! Very nice experience!
Gradinita cu Program Prelungit No 21 Ploiesti concluded in February a collaboration protocol with the Prahova County Museum of Natural Sciences, located in Ploiesti, with the aim of organizing for the preschools of 5-6 years, didactic activities on nature issues throughout the school year, in an exciting and child-friendly educational area, provided by the museum.
On Thursday, February 15th , 28 students, 2 teachers, 6 parents and 3 nursing staff went to the Prahova County Museum of Natural Sciences in Ploiesti, where they took part in the environmental awareness work on “Aquatic Animals,” supported by Professor Museographer who used special teaching materials. The activity was interactive, the children were fascinated and pleased with everything they saw and experienced!
Carnival was celebrated in our school for couple of days in every corner indoor and outdoor. We made arts and crafts, masks-ties-sticks-kites, we played and we danced in a modern and in a traditional style. Enjoy!
A new corner has been created in our yard last days, giving the chance to our students to practice their musical talents! Metal instruments as well as infant casseroles found their new position hanged on the railings.
….Can you hear them?
https://www.ebdomi.com/eidiseis-nea/13713-ma8hsh-sth-fysh-me-to-1o-nipiagogeio-voulas.html
On Friday 2nd of February 2018 (online) and on Saturday 3rd of February (in the newspaper) another article regarding our project with title “Learning in the nature with 1o Nipiagogeio Voulas” was presented on regional newspaper Evdomi which has a distribution of 10.000 newspapers per week and also an active online site for 12 municipalities of Eastern Attika (Acharnai, Markopoulo – Mesogaia, Kropia, Saronicos, Lavreotiki, Spata – Artemida, Pallini, Rafina – Pikermi, Oropos, Marathonas, Paiania – Glyka Nera, Vari Voula Vouliagmeni). Our project is famous now!
On Thursday 8th of February 2018 Pre-primary and Primary teachers met all together to share great results, ideas, tasks and to plan the new actions of the project. We discussed the evaluation results, the coordination of the activities and new tasks for the future.
On Thursday 1st of February we had a virtual meeting with a primary class in Piacenza. Pupils from Italy sang in French a very moving song from the film « les choristes ». We were impressed as the children sang in tune and in French !!!
French pupils showed flags, Italian, french and european, the logo of the project and the cards reveived from Piacenza and sang in English « Family Finger ». Some italian pupils knew this song and sang with us !! We really had a great time!
Our students’ enthousiasm about dinosaurs moved us outside the classroom! We picked up our favorite dinosaurs and we prepared an exhibition :some kids brought few athletic bricks to be used as stands, other placed the dinosaurs on them, other arranged rubber “pillows” and another group distributed pencils to everybody! Each kid sat in front of its preferable animal and prepared a painting. All the paintings were exposed as the dinosaurs were ! There where also many visitors in our prehistoric exhibition!
Further up the presentation of our European project on regional news, another article with title “1o Nipiagogeio Voulas: Lesson outside the classroom in the open sky” was published on Wednesday 31st of January 2018 on regional news vimaonline.gr for 6 municipalities ( Glyfada, Vari Voula Vouliagmeni, Alimos, Palaio Faliro, Helioupolis, Argyroupolis).
On Tuesday 30th of January 2018 an article regarding our partnership was published on regional news notosnet.gr (south municipalities of Attiki) with title “1o Nipiagogeio Voulas coordinates partnership among European schools for learning in the nature”.
On Tuesday 30th of January 2018 on local municipality news 3vita.gr (3V Vari Voula Vouliagmeni our municipality) an article about our project was published with title “1o Nipiagogeio Voulas – Lesson in the open sky”
CLIL ART at Primary School 2nd class: Winter time … with the famous Italian painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo, from Cremona, not far from Piacenza. He painted the four seasons using fruits, vegetables, flowers and all typical elements. We have created our Winter through English language.
In our school we are fans of recycling and we have just added a compost convertor in our garden. We explained to our pupils what we can throw in it and then we prepared special plastic boxes to be filled with raw fruits and vegetables, coffee, teabags, dried leaves..These boxes will be available to any pupil who wants to take one home, fill it and “feed” the compost convertor at school.
On Friday 19th January around 40 children had a virtual meeting with the pupils from the pre primary school of 1° Nipiagogeio Voulas Greece.
On the french side pupils sang in french then in english. We listened to greek songs.
We could see the New Year’s card the school received, and we showed the card they send to us.
It was a very great and very strong experience for every body : children and adults to see each other, that’s creating links between us and built a young Europe !!
It was a chilly day with icy wind then we were arrenged our skype meeting with Romania. But as our projects subject is outdoor education, we were not terrified of climate conditions and with lots of energy and fun we got connection with our lovely friends Mihaela and Iuliana . Also their colleagues was introduced.
Romanian children were well prepared – they sang and draw to us. We could see all activity and felt warm atmosphere from our partners.
We said hello, we were singing and we tried to show some our winter activities.
About 30 pupil in age 3-5 was participating on that meeting.
Thank you, Romania, for that great experience!
During two days, the 17th and the 18th of January 2018, the children were very excited about these unforgettable experiences with the opportunity to see as real, friends from Estonia and Greece. We played songs in English, specially prepared for this occasion and we drew postcards to be sent to our colleagues in this European program that we enjoy being part of it!
During the 18th and the 19th of January 2018 all the partners of the Erasmus+program had virtual meetings in pairs through skype, according to our transnational meeting in Estonia last October.
It was a real fresh and innovative experience for us and our pupils to meet our friends from Romania and France via skype.We sang songs, we exchanged few words in english and french, we showed them the christmas cards we had received from them and we all shared the pleasure of european partnership!
We were so pleased to receive postcards from Piacenza and the great greetings card from Greece. Part of the 4 years old children wrote in the languages of the project Happy New Year, on a card made with photos taken in the classroom for Christmas.
Then we went to the post office to buy stamps for the European countries and send them !!!
They were very proud !!!
We share our joyful activity – visiting the Zoo
Last week we visited Tallinn Zoo with our classes. There were 33 kids age 7 – 5. Tallinn Zoo holds the best collection of mountain goats and sheep in the world. They have most fascinating zoo collection in Northern Europe. The programm was called ” Where do animals live?” It is most pleasant way to learn about animals. We saw a lot of them: gouts, sheep, elephant, crocodiles, snakes, tiger and etc. Student found out that the elephant drinks the bucket of worm tee in the evening, crocodiles eat only meat not fish. And chimpanzees gave us funny performance. It was very exciting day for children and teachers. Children enjoyd learning outside the classroom.
Our outdoor classroom has been in daily use for five years.
We got it then we celebrated our kindergarten 30`s anniversary in 2013 – parents committee was collecting money with auction of self-designed chairs, local companies made donations to build cosy and waterproof shelter for children.
Besides everyday learning process we have celebrated several festivities in this lovely wooden house – mushroom exhibition, autumn`s birthday, apple-juice day, carrot-juice day with real bunnies, christmas parties, graduating kindergarten….
Visit of European Teachers during First transnational Meeting of our project 4.-6th Oct 2017 made our outdoor classroom internationally well known and our shelter is very happy of it.
Thank you, dear colleagues, for sharing wonderful experiences of outdoor activities, for all this positive energy we are getting in Arukyla by interacting all over the Europe.
This is our Erasmus + outdoor corner! We are very proud of it because all the beneficiaries of the project participated in it: students, parents, project team and the kindergarten teachers. We have also many improvement plans that we hope to make until the transnational meeting in April, when we are waiting for all partners in Romania. Thank you very much for the positive thoughts transmitted, the postcards and the work done by children from Greece and Italy. These will be displayed on our Erasmus panel in the interior of the kindergarten.
We are creating our Outdoor Erasmus+ Corner at the kiosk of our yard, in order to use this corner for our outdoor lessons. We hung a waterproof tent cloth for showing materials, photos or whatever we need depending on our lesson. There we hung the logo of our project with the flags of all partners and we discussed again with our students the cooperation among us.
What a great surprise for all of us in the 1 Nipiagogeio Voulas to receive postcards from our italian friends in Piacenza! We were very happy to read their wishes for Christmas. We also enjoyed writting christmas cards to all of our european friends in italian, english, estonian, romanian, greek and french!
The new outside blackboard in the school playground of the pre primary school Antoine de Saint Exupery in Marly le Roi.
Thank you Vassiliki, Melina and Anna you gave me this very good idea. We bought big wood panel. Our municipality was very helpful in painting and settling the black board on the wooden bike shelter.
Children were so exciting to use these new black board with chalks !
The bright colours of our garden inspired us to establish a “Museum of Ancient Greece” in the outdoors. As we had borrowed from “The Museum of Cycladic Art” an educational suitcase full of copies from the everyday life in Ancient Greece, we decided to organise a guided tour in the nature. Our pupils, divided in small groups, arranged the objects, installed a cash desk, wrote the tickets and also prepared the tour! It was an amazing experience for all of us!
The students of Primary school together with their teacher Carmela Simone prepared postcards from Piacenza to express their wishes “Merry Christmas!” to all European partners of our project.
Erasmus+ corner in our school with Christmas decoration and wishes in all the languages of our project… Merry Christmas!
Buon Natale! (Italian) Kala Christouyenna! (Greek) Joyeux Noel! (French) Craciun Fericit! (Romanian) Haid Joule! (Estonian)
We are very happy to receive Christmas wishes from our Italian colleagues in Piacenza!
The postcard presents the monument of Alessandro Farnese (1545-1592), duke of Parma and Piacenza. It was created by the sculptor Francesco Mochi. This monument is placed in Piazza Cavalli, in the center of Piacenza.
It is very important for our students to participate in this communication which gives them the opportunity to learn more about our European colleagues, their cities and their everyday real life. An excellent action, which gives us the motive for many different geography and language activities.
This year for the first time the Christmas decorations weren’t only inside our school, but also outside in our garden! We decorated with recycled handmade ornaments a big bush at the entrance of our school and also another tree at the corner of our yard. So we offered a beautiful Christmas decoration to our students and their families, and additionally to all the people of the local community passing by our school.
Also we decorated natural branches with Christmas recycled materials inside our class.
In our garden we made a big Christmas tree with the recycled materials.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
In Estonia celebrating Christmas is top event of kindergarten year. Because we have so much dark time in this period of a year, we really enjoy decorating and lighting with our children.
This year we used mostly recycled materials and peaces from nature around our kindergarten. Big hall is ready for 11 christmas parties with families!
Merry Christmas to everyone!
The children made 3d models of our school and our garden with Lego blocks and the natural materials.
Every child chose a tree of our garden. Now it’s not just a tree, it’s a friend. The children chose its name and made a decoration with the natural materials. During the year the tree will receive a lot of presents.
After our visit at Park we played with the leaves in our garden; the children observed the colours and forms of the leaves. Back in the classroom the teachers proposed many related activities.
On October we went to “Galleana Park”, near our school. The children 4 years old explored the Park, they observed the colours and forms of the trees and picked up leaves, branches, rinds and berries. A large heavy branch attracted the children’s attention and tested their strength with it.
On Friday 15th of December 2017 a great celebration of 30 years of European projects was organized by the Greek National Agency, the State Scholarships Foundation (IKY) in the Athens Concert Hall.
The Minister of Education (photo 1) and the Executive Committee of the State Scholarship Foundation presented the progress of European projects in Greece from 1987, when they started, till today. In this day conference there were also many different presentations of European projects from all levels of education from preprimary schools till universities. Vassiliki Anagnostou (photo 2 together with a colleague from Central Greece, Katerina Karkali) participated as a representative of preprimary education – the start of education – with the belief that preprimary schools need to be more active in European projects, as the cultural interaction, when working together with European partners, broadens the intellectual horizons of the teachers and their students, who are the future European citizens.
Chrystalla Petridou, the representative of the European Committee in this event, pointed out the meaning of European projects for the democracy and peace in Europe.
Our project has been disseminated on our local magazine : “La Chronique de Marly le Roi”.
The article explains the meaning and the goals of the partnership, the first meeting which was organized in Tallinn and what has been done so far on the french side, from Ecole Maternelle Saint Exupéry. It is very important that there is also a link to the project’s blog, for everybody who wants to learn more about the activities of our partnership.
4 years old pupils made three models of the playground of our school. The first step was to read a map from google, then they have to organize different parts : school, playground, trees, pedagogical garden, …
Children have to use : cardboard, crepe paper, sand, wood sticks…
Last step was to check if every part of our school was there, if anything was missing…
All our students of 4 and 5 years old have made this plastic model of the garden of our school. First they have looked for leaves,branches and pine-cones in our garden. Then they have coloured,cut and glued natural and recycled elements to make the plastic model. We have worked all together!
Teachers: Tigani-Fantini-Manini-Paganini
First we printed google map from our kindergarten. Children learned about the map and kindergarten yard. How birds can see our kindergarten and how we see it. Then we collected some natural and other material with parents help. This 3D map was made by children and their teachers!
We are the pre-primary school Carella, classroom C-D. We used natural materials to make the moder of our garden. The children have found some toys that they use in the garden and they have put them in the model.
On Friday 17th of November 2017 the head teacher Mihaela Toba as a Methodist Professor promoted our project and disseminated its activities in a methodical action. This activity was attended by 45 teachers teaching in kindergartens in Ploiesti.
Preparing an Erasmus + corner for outdoor education in the school garden, where students, teachers and families will add materials. The activity is still in progress and we had some parents volunteers who helped us.
After finding our school in Google maps, exploring our yard, doing a tour around our school with many stops for observing, playing and drawing in our garden… we created a 3d model of our school building and yard with recycled and natural materials.
We painted the trees in the kindergarten courtyard. It was a collective work in which the students made a banner where they painted with beautiful colors the trees of our garden in autumn.
We organized various sporting events for our students. One of the activities was called the “Ball at Captain”, where the teacher and his students went out into the yard of the kindergarten and played with the ball. Another day we organized an activity which was called the ” Little Pedestrian”. The children practiced the application of traffic rules in their neighborhood. They were exercised as they walked. We emphasized : Correct crossing the streets and recognizing the pedestrian signs.
The students have made a 3D model of the kindergarten in which they have imagined how the Outdoor Erasmus+ corner for education will look. This 3D map was made by children and their teachers with natural materials from our garden.
We created together with our students 3dimensional models of our schoolyard. We assembled them with garden’s materials: leaves, little piece of wood, dry berries and recycled material (box of tea, carton packs…), modeling clay.
We had fun!!!
In our beautiful garden we organized different outdoor activities. We got ready to explore our yard, we took our explorer’s material, we worked outside and we collected natural materials. Then every student created his terrarium. Also we drew Fall’ faces with hair made of fallen leaves.
5 years old pupils made a short-lived land art installation in the our school playground.
The printed leaves where colored with the oil pastels and the frame was decorated with small cut out leaves organized in algorithm.
One morning children went to a park closed to the school. They picked up leaves of different shapes and colors outside.
Fresh leaves are very fragile, so we decided to paint white papers with the colours of autumn, then the assistant cut the leaves with special shapes and children had to arrange them artistically to create mister or miss autumn.
My students who are 5 years old went outside the classroom to hunt snails.
This year we work about four elements. In this activity we go around our school garden in order to collect objects and build our terrarium.
Our object was to play bingo “the very hungry caterpillar” in the garden of the school. Our class has students of 5 years old. The names of the teachers are: Manini Angela and Paganini Cristina ” “
We often organise sport events using different equipment and involving parents .The result is always successful !
The olive tree and the bush in our back yard offered us the perfect scenery to represent greek ancient myths such as:
“The birth of goddess Athina”, where Athina came through god Zeus’ head and
“The conflict between goddess Athina and god Poseidon”, where the citizens chose the olive tree of Athina instead of water that Poseidon offered. The conflict ended up with the name” ATHINA” given to the town.
Autumn weather appealed us with its beautiful colours to walk around the school yard, observe, gather earth treasures and create arts and crafts. “Lady Autumn” sends you her best wishes for a colourful and peaceful November!
We created together with our students scarecrows for our vegetable gardens! We used old clothes, hats, papers, scarfs etc to prepare these colorful creatures.
The 3-4 years old children went to visit the park Jean Vitold very closed to our school.
They discovered this beautiful park with different eyes: with mirror to see the reflect of the trees, grass, sky, with frame to focus on details, with kaleidoscope to multiply the image.
The teacher, assistant and mothers guided the children.
The sorting out of the treasure: leaves, twigs stones… Finally painting with a twig!!!
An article about our project was published in local press Piacezasera.it
All’ Ottavo circolo di Piacenza l’Erasmus è di casa gia dall’infanzia
The 5 years old children celebrated autumn and birthday with a tree cake.
The base was a sponge cake prepared in the classroom with children, teacher and assistant.
Once cooked, the cake was cut in order to make tree tunk and branches.
Then the tree was decorated with nutela and smarties (sweets).
The cake was eaten outside as the ground was dry and the weather warm!
Our pupils were really brave to wander around the trees of our schoolyard where we had hanged lots of bats and ghosts! Only our “fresh made” pumpkins -grown in our vedetable garden since summer- looked a bit scary …Probably because of our little terrifying creatures!!
Our partners from Italy Marisa Badini and Maria Cristina Cella who participated last September in eTwinning conference in Florence (“Citizenship : A new ethic for the 21st century – The contribution of eTwinning”) disseminate our partnership in social networks Twitter, eTwinning, Facebook and Instagram.
On Friday the 10th of November we visited an ancient temple which is close to our school. As the temple was dedicated to god Appollon, we pretented to make an ode and we walked with raised hands in order to feel the unique atmosphere of the area. After having explored the temple we settled down on the hill to enjoy the beauty of the scenery and to draw our special point of vue… This visit has been a part of our project about “Life in Ancient Greece” which is being developed in our school for the last 10 days.
The class visiting local song festival ground – Aruküla Lauluväljak. This autumn rained a lot and the place was under the water. In a cold October day the little lake was covered with ice. It was good opportunity experiment with the ice. Different activities were taken place: looking sun through the ice, throwing pine cones on the ice. Children discovered how easily ice will broke and what is under the ice. Learning and having fun the same time.
New joyful corners have been created in our yard with the help of volunteers mothers. A hopscotch “takes them to the moon”, a beam helps them to keep their balance, and a chessboard makes them move towards different directions. Our yard now offers new experiences!
Today we had the pleasure to play traditional games in our yard with the grandparents of one of our pupils. We spent an hour together playing “tenekedakia” and “volous” and at the end we offered them the european gift that we had prepared in the classroom.
Figure 1. Treasures
Figure 2. Pirates
Figure 3. One of our 11 groups.
Happy hunters with their treasures.
First of November took place a big treasure hunting day in Aruküla Kindergarten. Treasures were objects in nature: sand, stone, leaves, pine cones etc (fig.1). Treasures were findable in the kindergarten’s backyard and surrounding area.
We had a special story before the treasure hunting. There were pirates in our area who were lost. And they saw the land and found empty treasure boxes with a map. They gave empty boxes to every kid and asked them to find treasures (fig.2).
All classes took a part in our outdoor sport event. After that all groups got warm drink with ginger and orange. This event gave us a lot of joy and happy children and teachers (fig. 3).
Below you can find the link to the on-line local newspaper, ph-online.ro where we sent an article to make known our project in Ploiesti.
![erasmus-Logo-212x300[1]](https://blogs.sch.gr/1nipvoul/files/2017/11/erasmus-Logo-212x3001.jpg){kind=logo}
Before making the map of the school ground, some 4 years old children have drawn the playground directly outside.
They had to draw the building of the school, the vegetable gardens and different areas, some trees, the sandbox, little houses…
As they are young, it was not a very easy work but they were very pleased and proud to do that !
Next step they will make the model of the playground with natural elements.
In order to create more pedagogical corners in our backyard for our students to write or draw, we painted with the help of volunteers parents two walls with special paint for boards. Our students loved this board and during their free time in the yard, many of them prefer to express themselves with the chalks!
The team from Romania organized on October 18, 2017, a thematic excursion in Bucov Park near Ploiesti. This was attended by 70 pre-school children from our kindergarten, 40 parents, and six teachers.The purpose of the activity was to collect materials from nature. Children helped by teachers and parents gathered leaves of different shapes, sizes, colors, chestnuts, acorns and fir cones. The materials gathered by the children were used in the mathematical work organized by their teacher in the park. All participants enjoyed the beauty and the warm of that day of autumn.
On Friday, October 20th, our children and teacher moved the classroom to the garden yard. They worked in micro groups with some of the materials collected in the Bucov park and made works of art about the autumn season.
We are very happy to present the official logo of our partnership, which is finally created after many discussions and different proposals from our team.
On 18th of October 2017 an article about the first transnational meeting of our partnership in Estonia was published at Sonumitooja, the East-Harju county’s newspaper with circulation around 3.000 per week.
During our first transnational meeting in Estonia, all the partners together organized the logo competition according to our schedule. After having exposed all the designs and drawings from our schools, we decided to make a combination of different ideas. The final logo will be ready and published in a short period of time, expressing the collaborating spirit of our partnership.
Our first transnational meeting took place in Arukyla, Estonia, where representatives of pre-primary and primary schools from 5 European countries worked together inside and outside the classroom in the European Nature, from the 4th till the 6th of October 2017. Our great partners, who participated in this transnational meeting, were:
Karin Reiska, Anu Meelimae and Aira Joots (Estonia)
Mihaela Toba and Iuliana Albu (Romania)
Carmela Simone and Marisa Sandrini (Italy)
Magali Labbe (France)
From our pre-primary school in Greece, which is the co-ordinator of the whole project, were:
Vassiliki Anagnostou and Themis Garofalaki.
After having completed the presentation of our schools, we shared thoughts and impressions about outdoor activities, we organized our next transnational meeting in Romania, we discussed about alternative ways of contact in-between us and we ended up with the logo competition.
On Monday the 27th of September 2017 the educational team of 1 Nipiagogeio Voulas called all the parents together for a briefing on the Erasmus+ project “LEARNING OUTside the classroom IN the EUROPEan nature”, where we informed them thoroughly for the project. The new Parents’ Association for the current school year is keen to get involved in the project’s activities. (Photo of the Parents’ Association in front of the first handmade poster of the project)
The rationale of this project is a result of the previous project Erasmus+ KA1 School Education Staff Mobility entitled “The pre-primary school 1 Nipiagogeio Voulas organizes learning in the outdoors” which was based on the theoretical and practical knowledge of a seminar “Outdoor arts and crafts” in Iceland. The interest of the participants in that seminar to share their experiences from previous Comenius projects, scholar partnerships and mobilities (for example the seminar with the title “The garden, a living monument. Heritage education gardens in Europe”) and their desire to work together in Outdoor Education, led to further discussions to organize a partnership.
The teachers from Northern Europe Estonia are well specialized in educational activities out in the nature. It is very interesting to exchange their good practices relating to teaching in the open and natural environment, that are already implemented in their education system. The partners from France and Italy can share innovative methods in cultural and art activities in the outdoors, as they have experience from projects who identify tools and practical training approaches, which facilitate the implementation of education of European garden and landscape art history. The applicant organization from Greece has a long experience in European projects and has theoretical knowledge regarding the outdoor education, but not so much practical experience, neither has Romania, as such activities are not very common in these education systems. Working together with European partners broadens the intellectual horizons of the teachers and improves the educational framework of all the participant institutions.
Therefore this strategic partnership will be a collaboration between pre-primary schools from different education systems, different landscapes, with different languages, but all the partners are united in their true interest and care for the natural environment and the sustainability of our planet.
The scale and nature of outdoor education practices varies between countries. Perception of nature, climate, open-air leisure traditions, landscape qualities, risk assessment and local economy are often defining factors. The level of planning, organisation, complexity and significance to curriculum differs. Some countries have an extensive tradition with “outdoor education” and they enrich school experience. While in other cultures the use of outdoor venues is a mean to compensate for lack of indoor facilities. Outdoor education is sometimes used to challenge the pupils endurance and skills through longer journeys, whilst in other situations it can be a single lesson with a relaxed/simple task.
In many countries there are dedicated centers for outdoor education, with highly qualified staff. In some cultures it is important to learn about the environment, outside. For others it is a venue of challenge. Then there is those who choose the open sky as the classroom, for regular curriculum. It is important for our partnership to study and work on these different factors. We will explore and share new innovative methods in teaching maths, sciences, literature, poetry in the outdoors and also in creating arts, playing drama with the open sky as our roof.
The current economic and social situation in Europe creates the necessity to form a project that, through interaction with nature, will promote the development of creativity, improve health and well being, and provide emotional uplift to teachers, students and their families. This partnership aims to seek alternative practices that do not require expensive equipment to be applied in the daily schedule, but utilize natural resources. In addition to these objectives of the project is to change approach and behaviors of European students who have frequent occurrences of obesity and other health problems because of excessive inactive life, as they were born and raised along with technology in a digital environment full of personal computers, mobile phones, gaming systems, MP3 players etc and they are not often out in the nature.
Moreover it aims at pointing out the importance of the outdoors for the children’s holistic development (personal and social) through practical ideas for early childhood education, it emphasizes the adoption of public spaces as “our spaces” in an attempt to form responsible and active citizens.
This project should be carried out transnationally, as it is necessary to share good practices that enhance the quality of early childhood education, which is so critical for the development of children’s personality. Outdoor education can accommodate almost any topic in a regular curriculum and sharing transnationally new methodology with inspiration can give to every partner great results.
This project will promote the dissemination of the best pedagogical practices of outdoor education among teachers of early childhood education at local, regional, national and international level.
On Friday 18th of January by a very cold morning, 30 pupils aged 3 to 6 went to the cultural center located in a lovely park closed to our school.
