Erasmus+ Project
Active strategies for inclusion and diversity in early childhood
Reference number: 2021-1-RO01-KA220-SCH-000030958
About This Collection
This collection presents educational methods developed by Grădinița MODEL (Târgoviște, Romania) as part of the Erasmus+ project focused on active strategies for inclusion and diversity in early childhood education. Each method card provides practical approaches for educators working with children aged 3-6 years.
Educational Method Cards
"I'm extraordinary and interesting" (Artistic competences)
Aim
Discovery and development of artistic skills and qualities: songs, dances, painting, handicrafts, dramatizations, theater etc.
Description
The children participate in courses for the development of artistic skills (art, music, theater etc.) and at the end of them will be chosen the most talented child who will participate in various competitions and local shows. They are "extraordinary and interesting" kids.
Educational Activities
This method can be used in practical and artistic activities.
Notes
Children participate in classes to spend free time in an attractive and stimulating way and some children manage to perform in different fields: music, sports, theater, painting etc.
Actors in kindergarten
Aim
Developing the creativity and the expressiveness of oral language.
Description
Starting from a well known story, the children, by rotation, will choose an animal mask from the story and together will imagine another one in which they are the main character. They will put in scene the story and show it to their colleagues.
Educational Activities
Creativity and language development activities.
Notes
The method can also be used in other types of activities, changing the characters, the children can be other animals, plants, members of a family, or have different jobs.
Art in Nature, Nature in Art (artistic competences)
Aim
Expressing creativity and aesthetic sense, by combining the elements of plastic language, supported by shapes and patterns from nature.
Description
Obtaining flowers prints, traces, color spots using natural hyacinth flowers. The realization of this theme determines the child to interpret spontaneous shapes and newly obtained colors, expressing the emotions experienced in close connection with nature.
Educational Activities
This method is done in artistic-plastic activities in kindergartens, with various themes that emphasize certain ideas.
Notes
Making decorative or ornamental compositions.
Art in the nature
Aim
Understanding of the diversity of the people, in comparison with the nature's diversity and variety. Making emotional and intellectual connections between each-other, exchanging experiences, discussing the feelings we have when standing together in the nature.
Description
The methods are observation and conversation. We should allow the children to feel the emotion, to have fun and enjoy the beauty of the autumn. Touching the nature makes them happy. Outdoor activities improve their health and make them joyful.
Educational Activities
More activities and play outside make the children happier and the teaching process more successful.
Notes
We used the collected leaves to make a hedgehog collage.
Emotions through the magnifying glass
Aim
To encourage children talk about their emotions and feelings. To notice positive emotions, feelings. To educate them reflect on their feelings, emotions.
Description
A friendly dragon needs the children's help to find out how he's feeling. The children will be the detective and, using a magnifying glass will identify the dragon's emotions and feelings and discuss about them. Having a round of discussions with children, the cases that makes someone happy, what they enjoy, what they are thankful for, what makes them sad, or angry. The children will try to find out what made the dragon feel a certain way and how could he improve his feeling.
Educational Activities
This method can be used when analysing various other topics. This activity may engage parents of the children.
Notes
At the end of the activity the children can draw the emotion they found with the magnifying glass.
Flower vase – string and wrap painting
Aim
Development of artistic sense and taste for beauty in art and nature.
Description
The children painted a vase with flowers in the kindergarten's yard using a string soaked in gouache paint in different colors. Also using gouache paint and painting brushes they painted flowers on wrap stretched around a table's legs.
Educational Activities
The methods are perfect for art education activities, but also in science, in learning about different plants, flowers, or seasons.
Notes
This kind of methods involve team work and also develop imagination and creativity.
The colors of nature
Aim
Spring moments… Development of artistic sense and taste for beauty in art and nature. To encourage children to observe details, colors in the nature. To develop children's creativity while using natural means.
Description
The children painted spring landscape on papers on the kindergarten fence, using watercolors and brushes, visually departing directly from the surrounding natural landscape.
Educational Activities
The methods are perfect for art education activities, but also in science, in learning about different plants, flowers, or seasons.
Notes
This kind of methods involve team work and also develop imagination and creativity. Children are encouraged to observe the beauty and diversity of nature, to create in a non-traditional way and using non-traditional means. To promote children's creativity, immediate natural environment is used.
The emotions cube
Aim
Identify the emotions and the situations in which they apply.
Description
The method involves the use of one cube. It will work like a dice. A child throws the cube, describes the emotion and list situations in which people may feel this way.
Educational Activities
The method can be used at the end of the activities for children to describe the emotion they experienced during this activity (whether they liked it or not). It can also be used in the activities of psychological counseling of children or in activities in which children learn about emotions.
Notes
A second or third cube can be used, so the children can work in pairs. Creating a role play with short dialogues or situations in which they might feel those emotions.
The story of the day (Language and communication competence)
Aim
Developing the creativity and the expressiveness of oral language.
Description
The children invented a story, starting from a boy that was different from his friends. One by one, the children stepped in front of the class and drawn a piece of the story. The boy wears every day the same clothes, a clown hat and a torn jumpsuit, he loved so much the circus that he spent all of his money on a circus ticket. In the second image we can see the child that went into the forest to find fruits and met with a bear that ripped all his clothes. In the fifth image is the Pink Fairy that appears and sees the boy sad and offers to fulfill his wish. In the last image is the boy's wish, he wanted a shirt that never gets torn, a pair of trousers and some flying sandals.
Educational Activities
Language development activities.
Notes
The method can also be used in other types of activities, such as art. It's a good activity to encourage team work, to develop imagination and creativity.
The TV
Aim
To encourage children to talk about themselves, to learn to introduce himself/herself or others.
Description
For children at the age of 3-4 years old: a frame is made of cardboard. During the activity, children, holding the TV frame in front of them, talk about themselves: say their name, age, what they like, who their friends are, what they have got etc. Then, by saying another child's name, the child gives the frame to him/her. For children aged 5-6 years old: A TV frame is made of cardboard or lego cubes. Children in pairs, or alone, can prepare various presentation of a chosen topic (professions, seasons, weather, means of transport etc.)
Educational Activities
Various TV Programs can be arranged, children's presentation may be video recorded and watched together. This stimulates children's self-confidence, skills of collaboration and communication.
Notes
The method is suitable for children of different ages. It does not require resources of time or materials to prepare. The method is suitable for both individual and team work.