2018 has been set as the European Cultural Heritage year. For this reason, we believe that it is the perfect moment for a project of interaction among Slovenia, Portugal and Spain, to let children from an early age, discover the cultural diversity of different countries. It is a reality that our classrooms, increasingly, have children from different nationalities and cultures. This project searches, to teach these differences as a source of personal enrichment and growth in a playful way. In this way, the respect and tolerance will be the main values that will guide our work of knowledge of the different heritages (oral and written tradition, art, music and cuisine) It is important that our students find themselves as active agents of this heritage today received from their elders, and that in the future, they will be responsible to transmit it to future generations, and even to enrich it with their contributions. We are conscious that international projects result in an enrichment of educational processes, and those activities with schools in other countries and with children of different educational levels, are motivating and reinforce in the children a sense of belonging to a common European area. We thus, pursue objectives of the Europe 2020 strategy looking for an improvement of the quality of our educational practise. With our partners we have already shared the experience of working together in various eTwinning projects and this has served to strengthen our conviction that we must open our school gates to enrich all aspects of the teaching-learning process. Part of the teaching staff involved in this project, has also participated in a KA101 project that has made us reflect on the importance of encouraging creativity, innovation and digital skills in school age, the need of enriching the pedagogical approaches and encourage cooperation and the exchange of good practices at the European level. This project will be the way to contribute to the development of our students's attitudes of respect and conservation of local, regional, national and international heritage and its social and cultural expressions ; It will create a personal and collective sense of belonging to a common Europe, a identity to awaken their curiosity towards the knowledge of new countries, cultures and traditions; to explore, collect and share aspects of Ethnography local, regional and national. All these objectives will be reachable through the application of new technologies (tools and platform eTwinning) and collaborative and cooperative work with other European centres and closest context of the participating schools. Designed activities encompass different aspects related to Cultural heritage. All of them have an interdisciplinary and global profile because children show more interest towards innovative, dynamic, and fun activities. They have been organised into four blocks for a greater operability and ease understanding. We will start the project with activities about oral and written tradition, with compilation of stories/legends in order to represent them in the form of a theatre play. In the second, the Visual Arts will be the protagonists, with visits to museums to discover masterpieces of the culture of each country in order to recreate them using a wide range of techniques, and we enjoy lectures from experts in the field. In the third block, we will work the music and dance and the possibilities that offer us to express our emotions and feelings. It will be a great challenge to record our songs and/or dances.The participation of different local artists open our project to the localities involved. The last block will be developed through the production of a book of typical recipes from the countries using different tools that internet offers. Active methodologies will be the unifying concept of the project that will guide the learning. Our aim is to let students to be the real protagonists, adopting a fully active role in the process. The exchange between teachers of tools and collaborative experiences, is one of the bases of this methodology and clearly, we are going to put into practice throughout the project. We will work on a reality (cultural heritage) and everything towards the realization of a final product, which filled with logic to the whole process. We look forward to visibility and dissemination programme seeking to promote these educational programs.This project would provide multiple options for use and enrichment to any person, group, or educational, cultural or local entities interested in the subject.
From the very beginning of the process of internationalization of the schools involved, we have been aware that this type of actions result in an enrichment of the educational processes. Furthermore, develop activities with schools settled in other countries and with children of different educational levels, are motivating which leads to strengthen in children, a feeling of belonging to a common European space. ONCE UPON A TIME was born after the appointment of 2018 as the “European Year of Cultural Heritage”, an ideal time to highlight the value of the heritage of European people with students of Primary Education. The plurality of our classrooms, marked by the diversity of nations and cultures among students, made this project an ideal way to start it and allow students to be aware of these differences by taking them as a source of personal growth and enrichment. The study of tangible and intangible heritage of the countries involved (Spain, Slovenia and Portugal), has invited to take an active role in all project activities by students, leading to the development of attitudes of respect and tolerance towards what originally was considered as different. The families have also participated in a very dynamic way through lectures, workshops, support for theater groups ... which has contributed to broaden the scope of the proposed objectives originally. Following the general lines of the objectives set in educational matters within the EU strategic framework 2020, our project has become the mean to develop attitudes of respect and conservation of heritage at local, regional, national and international levels and their social and cultural expressions; It has contributed to create a personal and collective identity of feeling of belonging to a common European territory, has aroused their curiosity towards the knowledge of new countries, cultures and traditions; It has allowed to explore, collect and share aspects of local, regional and national ethnography. New technologies and the eTwinning platform have been the central focus throughout the life of the project, making as a reality, the collaborative work between the different schools. The content of ONCE UPON A TIME has been divided into four blocks for a greater operability and ease of understanding during the school year 2018/2019. Each of them has given as final products resources that has been published and made available for the educational community. Thus, we started the project with compilations of stories / legends that were adapted to a theatrical script, translated into different languages and put on stage during the mobility of the teachers. The second block highlighted the plastic arts as protagonists with visits to museums to discover masterpieces of the culture of each country that let us to recreate them with different techniques, we received talks by experts in this field and could implement digital museums in the schools with the families’ collaboration. The publication of a calendar with images of student works will allow these contents to be sustainable and last over time. In the third block we work music and dance bringing the most popular aspects to students: fados, jotas ... The adaptation of some of these pieces and their recording in a studio, have been the final product of this block. The project has been closed with a final work block focused on gastronomy with the collaborative realization of a recipe book collected in the three countries. From the beginning we have sought for ONCE UPON A TIME to reach beyond the surroundings near the center and reach other contexts further away from the municipalities of the schools through a broad plan of dissemination activities: meetings with teachers, events in the schools for families, Open Days, publication of articles in local newspapers, regional radio interviews, participation in Innovation Days, teaching presentations for teachers nationwide ... which has allowed participating organizations to consolidate as referent on Europeans Projects in their different regions or countries.