Background The preschool indoor and outdoor environment can be regarded as "the third pedagogue", meaning that besides teachers and other children the environment itself is important for the child's learning. A good learning environment is a priority in preschool quality improvement, as it will support the children's own initiative, as well as their skills and desire to learn. It offers meaningful cooperation and is fun, eventful and challenging. It is self-instructing and enables children to use their influence and sense of responsibility. There has been two traditions in European ECEC: one that promote the learning perspective, one that has the focus on care. The indoor and outdoor preschool environments have been set up in these traditions. The Creative Learning Environment project wants to develop improved learning environments in preschools, using both perspectives and traditions. The project focus is on action, to make visible change in our learning environments. Important aspects of designing learning environment are: - fostering new generations of innovative entrepreneurs - promote children's health through play and exercise - find safe and secure solutions for children's adventures Objectives By participating, the educators in the project preschools will develop knowledge, courage and inspiration to set up creative learning environments indoors and outdoors. The educators will be able to use the learning environment in their teaching in an exploratory way, throughout the day. The learning environments and the professional use of these, will give higher quality in Early Childhood Education and Care. Participants Three preschools participate in the partnership; Frötuna preschool in Norrtälje,Sweden, Saulespuke preschool in Bauska, Latvia and Geldsted preschool in Middelfart, Denmark. All three preschools are well established in their towns and villages, but are of different size. They all welcome children of different social background and have children enrolled with learning difficulties and physical impairments, but only Saulespuke is specialized in the field of special needs. Activities and methodology The project is designed to create real change and involves all teachers. 1. It starts by self-assessment or pilot study at each preschool, to define the quality of their learning environments; which are high quality learning spaces and what areas need improvements. They do observations and interview children and parents. Then they classify the different spaces, through discussions on staff meetings in; Good/ well-equipped, forgotten, or bad learning spaces (dangerous, poor or limitative). During the pilot study the educators also study research, literature and attend lectures on topics like Outdoor education and Creative Learning environments. Photos and reflections about current learning spaces are documented and published for all participants to follow, also the parents. The result is a comprehensive survey of functional and dysfunctional learning environments; a list of good examples and analysis of why these support Childrens' learning, a list of things to improve (and why) and a list of things we need to learn in order to accomplish what we want. 2. Each partner prioritize their list of improvements into an Action plan. All participating preschools exchange Action plans and give feedback to each other, using TwinSpace and other digital tools. Alterations are made after feedback. 3. During the Action period, we carry out the Learning Environment improvements indoors and outdoors - and visit each other to take active part. The 3 transnational meetings will follow the same pattern: job shadowing, active participation in Action projects, academic input like lectures and workshops - and visits to different local preschools to collect good examples and get unexpected input. 4. After the mobilities the rest of the Action plans is carried out. Final documentation is done. We share our results and experiences with others. Based on the project, we will compile a report and a inspirational manual; Creative Preschool Learning Environment. Results - Visible concrete improvements in the indoor and outdoor environments, in terms of creativity, learning possibilities, variation and safety for children - Accessible learning spaces and materials for all children, including disabled children and children from economically and socially challenged families - Before-and-after documentation that shows the learning and change process, with childrens' and parents' participation - Inspirational manual: Creative Preschool Learning Environment Long term benefits More than anything, the project will create a "dig-where-you-stand"-mentality. The preschool teacher is a professional who can learn and work together with colleagues and foreign partners to improve the learning environment of the preschool - in order to offer equal learning oportunities to children and lift quality of early education.
Background We wanted to develop the preschool learning environments to support the children's own initiative, their skills and desire to learn by offering them meaningful cooperation, be fun, eventful and challenging. A self-instructing environment enables children to use their influence and sense of responsibility. We regard the environment as "the third pedagogue", and it is important for children's learning. Aspects of designing our learning environment was: To support fostering innovative entrepreneurs, promote children's health through play and exercise, create flexible environments with changing and creative materials and safe and secure solutions for children's adventures. We saw that the preschool environments were set up in two preschool traditions, one that promoted learning and one that focused on care. We have inspired each other to use both perspectives and through actions made visible changes in our environments. Objectives Our surveys and evaluations of the learning environments have played a major role in improving the quality - it has given the educators a greater knowledge and awareness of the environments impact on learning. We have seen that the educators together developed knowledge, courage and got inspiration to set up creative learning environments and now use the environments in their teaching in a more exploratory way, throughout the day. Participants Three preschools participate in the partnership; Frötuna preschool in Norrtälje, Sweden, Saulespuke preschool in Bauska, Latvia and Geldsted preschool Middelfart, Denmark. All three preschools are well established in their villages, but are of different size. All welcome children of different social background and have children enrolled with learning difficulties and physical impairments, the preschool in Saulespuke is specialized in the field of special needs. Activities and methodology. We designed the project to create real changes and involve all teachers. 1. It started by self-assessment to define the quality of the learning environments; in high quality learning spaces and areas that needed improvements. Observations and interviews were done with staff, children and parents. The different spaces were classified by staff through discussions in; good/ well-equipped, forgotten, or bad learning spaces (dangerous, poor or limitated). The educators studied research, literature and attend lectures on topics like Outdoor education, Creative Learning environments, IBSL- Inquiry-based science Learning, the theory of Affordance, Sensory behavior and Visual support. Photos and reflections were documented and published for all participants and parents to follow. And the result was a comprehensive survey of functional and dysfunctional learning environments, what to develop and why? 2. Each partner prioritized their list into Action plans. The preschools exchanged Action plans and gave feedback to each other. After feedback, some additions and/or changes were made to the plans. We planned to use TwinSpace and e´Twinnning as digital platform but as some of the participants had difficulty orienting themselves and using it for different reasons, it so happened that we used other digital tools like Zoom, Skype, Jits.meet and Facebook. 3. During the Action period environment improvements were done - and we visited each other to take active part. The 3 transnational meetings that we planned changed to 2 and 1 virtual exchange due to the Covid-19 pandemic restrictions. The two transnational meetings, one in Sweden and one in Denmark followed the same pattern: job shadowing, active participation in Action projects, academic input - lectures and workshops and visits to local preschool to get input and collect good examples. The virtual meeting with Latvia had approximately the same structure, but the visits were carried out by recorded films from the environments, online meetings and workshops with staff. And the lectures were webinars. 4. After the mobilities the rest of the Action plans were carried out and new ones were made continuously as needed. Documentation and results were shared. Based on the project, we compiled a report and will create a common Inspirational manual. Results - Visible concrete improvements in the environments, Accessible learning spaces and materials for all children, including disabled children and children from challenged children and families, before-and-after documentation that showed the learning and change process, greater competence among educators and a continued collaboration in constructing an Inspiration manual. Long term benefits The project created courage to change and develop through action together and with colleague from other countries. We learned from each other how to raise quality by combine the two preschool traditions where both care and learning are highlighted in EDUCARE - and thus been able to increase the equivalence and learning opportunities for children in European preschools.