Multiculturalism is a challenge of modern time and the education for a multicultural world has to begin at pre-school level, since this period is crucial for moral and value system development at children. Language is a essential for entering a multicultural society. In terms of language, there are both important, the mother tongue and a foreign language. Foreign language enables communication, collaboration and the insight into other cultures, values and erases fear and prejudices towards others. In kindergartens learn children through games, own activity and learning by doing and those are fundamentals for the childs' development in a multicultural society. On those grounds we established a partnership between five countries (Slovenia, Estonia, France, Italy, Bulgaria) who face the same challenges and share the same views and values. We identified those through a questionnaire and with sharing ideas online. Such analysis of present situations in participating countries showed that kindergarten educators don't have sufficient knowledge and skills for activities, which would stimulate early childhood language learning. Futher more, they don't even have specific opportunities for social skills development at their children, which are essential for tollerance and acceptance of other cultures. All partners share serious lacks in early childhood language learning, since there is no systemmatical approach (activities for early childhood language learning are up to individual kindergartens and mostly connected with financial expenses for parents), whereas educators and parents are interested in early childhood language learning and recognize the benefits of such activities and feel the need for such education at their children. Main objectives of our project are: - social skills and competences development at children with learning by doing (NTC learning, movement, art, social games, ICT and robotics, math and creativity, singing, learning cards, reading backpack) in indirect interaction with fellow children from different countries, - improving English skills at the kindergarten staff (1st year will be a special focus on English lessons for kindergarten teachers; those lessons will be carried out by school teachers or volunteers for all kindergarten teachers and will be free of charge; 2nd year kindergarten teachers will use that knowledge in direct activities with children and continue their lessons on an advanced level), - multiculturalism promoting with exposure to foreign language and early childhood language learning. Project goal realisation will be assessed by qualitative (formative assessment, recordings, diaries, interviews, ...) and quantitave (English skills, parents' satisfaction with the activities, teaching and learning material, ...) methods. We will involve approximately 1000 participants in the project activities (children, educators, parents, school staff for kindergartens next to schools, representatives of local communities and educational institutions). Educators will share their experience, prepare learning activities, presentations on teaching methods and apply those teaching methods. As a main product, we will publish an e-manual, which will stimulate the development of social values for an successful social integration and promotion of those values. The written content (songs, descriptions, observations) will be written in English and the native languages. We see an added value and sustainable impact of our project in providing a model for early childhood foreign language learning in rural areas with limited ressources for children and parents, so they have the opportunity to be integrated into today's multicultural society. Further more, we expect that English language learning will become a daily part of the kindergartens' activities with positive sustainable impact on their social skills, multicultural understanding, empathy skills and their improved ability to learn foreign languages in their future school lives and lessons.
Education for a multicultural world in an environment, that is changing very fast, has to be set already at pre-school level. Language knowledge and training on this level is essential for preparing a small child and consequential its family for a multicultural society. Development of social skills, collaboration, communication, tolerance towards others, critical thinking in an early stage are fundamentals for building a future society, where the children can be fully integrated. This is the reason for the established partnership among four countries on the grounds of analysing, identifying and sharing the same issues and challenges. Open curricula and work fields enabled a strong framework and broad variety for our cooperation. We created a partnership, which included more than 1000 children from our organizations, teachers, parents, and fellow colleagues, representatives of different associations on local, regional, (inter)national level, municipalities and professional institutions. We involved actively not only our whole organizations, but also parents and professionals from higher educational institutions. Furthermore, we entered the ground of scientific approach to teaching and learning in kindergartens with following activities: - improving English language knowledge for the staff, using new methods of early childhood language learning, thus to increase the number of English learning lessons for children, - learning about volcanoes and creating experiments, - sharing national fictional and non-fictional stories and the characters and heroes from those stories, - exchanging and planting seeds, - writing English letters and word in the snow, - sleeping over in the kindergartens and learning about our night skies, - reading literature with parents in form of a English backpack, - exchanging games, gifts, learning each other’s’ dances and songs and collaborate in English speaking ones, - collaborating online, playing quizzes and puzzles, competing in video conferencing online tools, - using tablets, apps, robotics and coding for English training, - learning about the environmental issues and how to take care of our local and wider environment, which were quite on a high level for pre-primary schools. With such activities, we reached the set objectives: - improvement of English language knowledge at children and professionals in kindergartens, - improvement of social skills and competences of children and increasing the social inclusion of children, - improvement and increase of quality and professional skills (new methods of teaching foreign language and of teaching in general, digital skills and social skills) of kindergarten teachers, - raising the awareness about other countries and the European area and consequently the tolerance and understanding among different families and people, - promoting and stimulating of multiculturalism by exposure to foreign language learning. We think that we reached the set objectives and even exceeded them by following activities, impacts and results: significant improvement of quality and number of English related lessons, a lot of them with ICT aid, obtained awareness about the fact that we live in a multicultural society already on pre-primary level, huge impact on local, regional, national and international level (among them fellow professional institutions, secondary and higher education institutions, associations, NGOs, local municipalities), presentations and participation at local, regional, national and international seminars and conferences, visibility in online news platform, classic newspapers, social media, national radio and a large and rich database on Twinspace. Concrete results are our eBook, collection of papers, a successful international conference in Slovenia with external eminent professionals, the database on Twinspace with videos, sheets, songs, drawings, presentations, games, movement related activities, stories from all countries, IT related activities (Kahoot quizzes, Padlets, online puzzles, robotics lessons, QR codes, etc.). The long-term benefits of our project will be not only one model, but more proposed models for early childhood foreign language learning, which we already connected to STEM area, since in this area we witness a big lack. We enriched our limited resources with not only this models and approaches, but also with English language learning on a daily basis. This has long-term impact on children, the staff, parents and the local environment and provides good practice examples for the regional, national and international level. English is now present in the everyday life and lessons of all organizations and will be part in the future. Thus, this has and will have sustainable effect on children’s social skills, multicultural understanding, empathy skills and the ability to learn foreign language, but due to interdisciplinary approach it will have such effect also on other subject and fields in their lives.