The project, called "Box of Treasure: Distance Learning System in the Kindergarten" focuses on creating effective and innovative distance teaching system in the kindergarten, based on international experience. Five partners - kindergartens from four different countries such as Lithuania, Greece, the Republic of North Macedonia and Hungary have been working for two years together in order to discover the best methodologies for indoors and outdoors activities when teaching process cannot be organized on daily basis and distance learning/teaching is the only way to continue educational process in the time of any crisis throughout the world. The distance learning system has been created as the main outcome of the project. There are two participants from each partner institutions. The project consists of five partner meetings and every meeting holds the main topic in order to ensure different perspectives of distance learning issues, such as distance learning and teachers competences, distance learning and parents role, distance learning and technical issues, in terms of designing activities, methodologies as well as choosing the best and the most convenient platform for this kind of work. There is much online work done in between these meetings and the project members have been working hard to summarize other practice, collecting advice from the governmental bodies and own experience. In addition to this "the box of treasure" has been created and it consists of instructions for the parents, tasks for the kids and family activities. It could be successfully used when the kid has been sick and spent some time at home and when the kid feels fine but still stays a few days at home so parents could follow his education process and help them to get back to the kindergarten routine, doing daily tasks. It is important time because the partners have realized that the most of the time kids struggle to come back to the kindergarten after getting sick, vacations and etc. In a long perspective the teachers has got to used IT technologies, platforms, discovered how to make videos and high quality photos, how to use other programs such as digital board online. The participants of this project has been paying much attention to analyse previous experience and find the best solution, how preschoolers could be taught, how to keep kids attention, how much screen could help, video conference or individual plan would be a better choice. The methodology has been tested between partner schools in every country and results have been shared in order to improve it. Our methods of distance learning/teaching are unique in terms of the combination of indoor and outdoor activities. Very special attention has been paid to the foreign language teaching systematically. In other words, it has been realized that any foreign language has to be taught without interruptions in order to stimulate kids brains and help them to get used the language faster and easier. Moreover, a structure helps any teacher not to get lost and parents could feel safe with the instructions, clear indications, advice, tasks, routine plan to organize distance learning process for their kids.
The aim of the project is to create a new methodology for distance education with emphasis on outdoor learning based on international experience. Objectives: x to improve teachers competences in terms of distance learning practice; x to provide necessary knowledge and technical IT skills for teachers; x to create distance learning system which has been tested in the kindergarten and could be used internationally; x to find a balanced and well structured system in between outdoor and indoor activities; x to provide necessary information and tools for the parents to work at home with their kids; x to improve staff foreign language skills; x to reduce level of stress in unusual situations; (such as pandemic) x to integrate less opportunities kids into the distance learning process (ethnic minorities, special needs); x to support management of the kindergarten to have right tools, resources and knowledge to organize distance learning process when it is needed; x to develop future projects.
The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted the normal functioning of the education system around the world. Most kids could not attend kindergarten and educational institutions had to quickly adapt to the new conditions and overcome the challenges that arose. Starting from then, there was much stress from both sides, nor teachers neither parents. Till then, there had been a few tries without any clear system what to do with the pupils in the kindergarten when they physically cannot be in the kindergarten. It had been very challenging. Some unstructured tasks had been published on the kindergartens platforms or simply sent by emails to the parents. But the structure as well as explanation to the parents had been missing and it played a very important role why some kindergartens just gave up and stopped working at all. At the beginning of distance learning, the skills and experience of teachers in working with information technologies, the development of high-quality and appropriate distance education content, technical problems, the negative impact of distance education on children's health, etc. became apparent. Apart from this, the most of experience which had been used before in distance learning, it had been just indoor activities and there was no integration of indoors and outdoors activities in the system. Our participants of this project has found it very useful and necessary this type of integration into online curricula. So in this project we paid attention to the solution of the mentioned problems by creating the distance learning methodology in preschool organisations.