In European Union 2020 Education Targets, internationalization in education field and increasing cooperation for mobility are very important. The importance that given for improving the quality of early childhood education and care is parallel to the importance that given to make children skillful at basic life skills in accordance with their interests and talents in the Ministries of Education. Game is very important for children’s mental, social, linguistic, learning and intelligence developments. In EU Early Learning Targets, it’s emphasized the necessity of structured games and the games started and directed by children (by themselves) in the learning process. We can create and interesting learning environment with game based learning (GBL) that influences children’s behaviour provides desired learning outputs. If our teachers have adequate information and skills about the game methods and styles that they choose and practice, they can contribute the children’s developments by creating efficient learning opportunities for students (sts). Our target is to produce content and lesson guides by cooperating with our partners across Europe and to minimise our students’ cognitive, mental and physical problems such as inactivity, anti-sociality, introversion, lack of cooperation, lack of eye-hand coordination, tendency to violence, lack of communication, nondevelopment of thinking skills that arise from technology addiction, economic and household troubles by making our teachers learn about GBL across the Europe and developing both their professional skills and sts-parents qualities. We aim to make real these with our project: - To develop our teachers’ professional skills on GBL - To prepare our own lesson sources and guides - To become skillful at using GBL strategies for improving the quality of main education, creative and critical thinking, interdisciplinary approaches. - To increase the sts’ motivation by using the technological devices in the classroom (smart board etc) to produce content in GBL education. - To prepare suitable environment for the games and to increase game variety that our teachers can play with the sts in every education environment. - To minimise our sts’ cognitive, mental and physical problems by directing their over energy in an efficient way owing to GBL. - To develop mutual respect and cultural awareness, to gain common education values and to develop language skills for our teachers by studying politics, system of education and practices in EU countries. - To create an awareness for GBL across Europe. All partners have their own Project Management Teams to carry out and manage our Project. The Committees of Participant Election have been set up to elect participants taken their letters of intent and CVs. There are some essentials based on to elect the participants: - To contribute the period of project preparation. - To be a basic English user (the language certification of A1 level) - To be responsible on project management and dissemination - To make application with Europass CV - To have proficiency to represent our schools and countries abroad. The participants selected by our partners will attend 5 mobilities (5 days for every mobility). Our project has these mobilities: 1. Prepearing a sample lesson guide (Romania) 2. Workshop: Designing toys and exhibition (Lithuania) 3. Prepearing game fields in the garden (Italy) 4. Organize a tournament for outdoor games (Turkey) 5. Prepearing magazines introducing games (Macedonia) Owing to our project, we popularize GBL across Europe with our partners by cooperating. The variety in the methods of education in our schools will be increased. Our teachers’ professional skills will be developed and they will be able to produce their own lesson contents, thus our sts’ motivation will be increased. The teachers will get the skills such as using GBL to develop the quality of main education, creative and critical thinking, interdisciplinary approaches. Thanks to GBL, our sts’ cognitive, mental and physical problems will be minimized by being directed their energy and their personal and social skills will be developed. We will increase the visibility of our project by sharing our results and reports on Erasmus+ Project Result Platform. Thus, other groups being interested in this topic will utilise from a study that European grant has been given.
In early childhood, play is an area that contributes to the psychomotor, social, cognitive and linguistic development of the child, as well as to lay the foundation for intelligence, learning and socialization. In Europe, it was emphasized that children should be given more place to unstructured and structured games in the early learning process. In this context; Through our project, the knowledge and skills of our teachers about the games, methods and techniques to be applied were increased, the games were transferred to the lesson plan and they were given the opportunity to do game-based education. Our project goals; - to develop our teachers' professional skills in game-based education - to be able to prepare our own resources, course content and guide - game and game strategies; to increase the quality of primary education, to gain the ability to use creative and critical thinking, interdisciplinary approach - To increase the variety of games that our teachers can use in the educational environment and to prepare a suitable environment for the game, - Directing children's energies correctly thanks to game-based education; to minimize physical, mental and cognitive problems - gaining a broader understanding of practices, policies and education systems in EU countries; Developing mutual respect, cultural awareness, gaining common education and training values, increasing language proficiency in our teachers - To raise awareness of game-based education across the EU. Project activities we do to realize our project goals; - Lesson plans were prepared in workshops with partners during our first mobility, Romanian mobility. Games (traditional children's games, outdoor games, classroom games) were integrated into these plans as content. 45 game-based lesson plans were prepared. - In Macedonia, playgrounds were arranged. This activity supported teachers' ability to develop interdisciplinary activities. With the plans we have prepared, practical workshops were held in these playgrounds with students and project partners. - In order to increase the diversity of games, each project partner prepared 2 traditional game videos and shared them on social media. In addition, 33 game activity plans were prepared by the project partners and transferred to our project magazine. - Our project magazine draft was created in the Italian mobility, the plans we made, the game activities we prepared, our playgrounds were transferred to the magazine. - In our Lithuanian mobility, workshops on designing toys were held with students and teachers, an exhibition of these toys was made and these exhibition pictures were transferred to our magazine. - In Turkey mobility, outdoor games, traditional children's games, classroom games, art activity workshops were held with students. Each country performed their plays accompanied by their local clothes. A children's festival was held on the final day of the project. Results of our project: -Teachers' ability to transfer and apply game-based content to the course content has improved. - It had a positive effect on their awareness of different languages and learning different languages. - The skills of teachers and students in project making, executing and taking responsibility have improved. - Our project; Our social media accounts (instagram, blog, facebook) , e-book , our end-of-project magazine and our posts on the Erasmus+ Project Results Platform were brought to the European dimension and visibility was ensured. - Project partners participated in Erasmus Days events held in their cities in 2021-2022 and contributed to our dissemination by increasing our visibility by presenting the project. Expected long-term effects; - Teachers' game-based teaching skills will be used in their future professional lives and thus transferred from generation to generation, - students' curiosity towards different languages will contribute to their desire to learn languages throughout their education life; - Our published journal will be included in the school archives and will guide teachers; - Teachers who have developed project management skills will be willing to do projects in the coming years; - Our project, published on the Erasmus+ Project Results Platform, is expected to be a guide for teachers in Europe.