Development of Inspirational Outdoor Learning Spaces and Hands-on Learning Projects

Project summary

Playing in creative and natural environment outdoors and working on hands-on projects, educates children in academic, physical, emotional, social ways. Therefore the implementation of the project is crucial for the organizations providing outdoor education to improve staff qualification and gain good practice ideas to further develop the work and methodology of outdoor pre-schools. With this project , VsI Laimingu vaiku pilis, would have an opportunity to exchange good practices with pre-schools from other countries and apply the gained new information locally. The outdoor education practices based on children led hands-on projects are still new in Lithuania, therefore there is a huge need for communication with foreign outdoor pre-schools to develop the professional and personal skills of staff and increase the self confidence while working with locally new ideas. The coordinating school, as well as the partner schools, would also share the project results locally, as it is open for the visits of other pre-schools and willing to share the good practices, therefore it adds up to the numbers of people who will be effected by the results of the project. The project "Development of Inspirational Outdoor Spaces for Children Learning" is focused on exchanging good practices within the pre-schools in three countries- Lithuania, Great Britain and Iceland, that work based on outdoor learning programs and methods and use nature as the major working and learning tool. The major goal of the project is to train the staff members in the fields of development of inspirational outdoor spaces and children led hands-on projects. This goal will be assessed though implementing of the project objectives. Main objectives of this project are: - for the staff to exchange experiences with partner schools of how to easy and quickly create inspiring outdoor spaces in the daily pre-school work; - for the staff to exchange methods and ways of inspiring children-led projects and apply them in daily work; - to create at least 2 long lasting outdoor spaces in each partner setting that would inspire children learning; - to gain and use at least two new methods for 2 new children led hands-on projects in each school; - to evaluate the spaces, their usage and children learning in them in 4 areas of achievements: 1) academic knowledge and curiosity; 2) physical abilities; 3) emotional development; 4) development of social skills The objectives of the project are directly linked with acquisition and development of skills and competences of two target groups: schools' staff and schools' pupils of the age from 3 to 6 years of. This will be achieved through the process of mobility trainings and the process of creating and using the outdoor spaces and children led hands-on projects. The planned activities are of three types: 1) good practice exchange visits; 2) Homework of participating schools; 3) monthly online meetings. The qualitative results during the activities: 1) During the good practice exchange visits all the participants of the visit will be able to see the existing inspirational spaces in the visited school and share the methods used in each of the settings for children led hands-on projects. After seeing the situation, all the participants of exchange sessions will give the ideas and solutions to increase the quality of existing spaces and apply the new or better apply the existing methods for developing hands-on projects. The discussion will result in the decision on which ideas to implement: 2 ideas for outdoor spaces creation and 2 ideas for new methodology will be selected and applied during the homework session. The participants in the exchange visits will be 3 staff members from each visiting organization, the local organization might have more involved staff members depending on the working environment in the setting. During the exchange sessions, the improvement of skills and qualifications will occur. 2) After each good practice exchange visit, the homework activities will come to place. During the homework activities, the schools will have to implement the selected ideas and share the process of implementation with other partner schools during the monthly meetings online. By homework activities, staff will create at least 2 new inspirational learning spaces and will use at least two new methods for developing the hands-on projects. Organizations will share the challenges with partner schools, which will add up to the knowledge and qualification of all schools staff.