The second Learning/Teaching/Training activity, in the framework of the European ERASMUS+ KA2 project, entitled „Quality-3C Child (cheerful, courageous, creative) child?“ took place in Zagreb from 4th to 8th of December 2017. This activity was organized with the main topic focusing on „Assessment of child’s development in the learning process“.
As the Croatian project partner Kindergarten Jarun is a big kindergarten with almost 900 children in 7 different facilities, all partner participants were divided into smaller groups for visiting all facilities of the kindergarten. Participants had to observe the everyday educational process in several groups through the Wind-Rose model framework.
Afterwards, all partners discussed the applicability of the Wind–Rose model in practice, through focus groups reflecting on the observed educational process. It was a useful sharing of experiences and observations which provided feedback to partners concerning a quick use of the Wind-Rose model.
The Croatian host presented the obligatory way of planning educational work with preschool children in Croatia (reffered age 1 – 7). Assessing children’s development is the basis for planning the actual educational work with children, therefore different assessment methods were presented in detail, accompanied with a lot of formal and informal materials used in this process.
Two interesting workshops were held by the Estonian team – one by the project coordinator Ellen Einaru where all partners shared the experiences of assessing children in their countries.
The other workshop was led by prof. Maria Jurimae, about the topic „How children can assess their kindergarten“.
Beside the mentioned topics, one day was dedicated to the “Growing Up Together” support program for parents. This support program for parents was developed within a Unicef project in Croatia in 2008, and now it is being held in over 100 kindergartens throughout Croatia, one of which is Kindergarten Jarun. The whole program was presented to the partners by one of the authors of the program, prof. Branka Starc, an experienced Croatian psychologist.
After her presentation, the Croatian team members, also certified leaders of the “Growing Up Together” program for parents, held one of the workshops for parents with all partners, giving them an impression of how the program works for parents.
On the last day, the partners visited the private kindergarten „The Little Researcher“ where they got an insight about a different kindergarten concept based on the Reggio approach.
Serious work was also dedicated to the work with the quality survey done so far – the Estonian partners made a presentation of the achieved results in the second phase of the survey.
The Portuguese team had a presentation about their second application of the quality survey.
Finally, important steps towards the final goals of the project were discussed, as well as the development of the final Wind-Rose model, the next meeting in Latvia and the Estonian Conference in June 2018.
Beside the project-related work, partners had an opportunity to learn about Croatian culture and educational history in a joined tour in the historical centre of Zagreb.
Quality - 3C Child 