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Kitchen Lab for Kids

Funder: European CommissionProject code: 2018-1-PL01-KA201-050857
Funded under: ERASMUS+ | Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices | Strategic Partnerships for school education Funder Contribution: 214,444 EUR

Kitchen Lab for Kids

Description

Skills in STEM are becoming an increasingly important part of basic literacy in today’s knowledge society. In line with an important benchmark of EU strategies for 2020 (at least 95% of children - from 4 to compulsory school age - should participate in early childhood education), the project addressed the need for a systemic and integrated approach to ECEC by identifying key issues and questions for an effective STEM education. The project consortium, coordinated by Jesuit University Ignatianum in Krakow, included 5 partners coming from 4 European countries: IT, PL, ES, IR. The project aimed at enhancing the quality of ECEC by A/ strengthening the scientific and methodological skills of preschool teachers by providing them with a collection of innovative resources and creating social network to exchange ideas and support each other in implementing innovations in their own environment; B/ supporting scientific thinking development in young children by providing them with positive, joyful experiences in learning science, strengthening their engagement and cognitive curiosity, thus preventing under-skilling in STEM learning in the future; C/ supporting parents involvement; D/ raising an awareness of school managers and policy makers responsible for implementing STEM ideas into the preschool core-curricula. The following actions were taken within the project frame:1/ The „Report” from international comparative research was published - the diagnosis of teacher’s knowledge and opinions about the possibilities to introduce STEM education on a preschool level. The diagnosis included data on both, qualitative and quantitive analyses, along with the selection of important literature available in English and national languages and comparative analyses of core-curricula in project countries. As a result, the matrix of core STEM skills for preschool children was designed; 2/ The collection of STEM resources for young children (Teaching Set) was designed and published on project website. The idea of a “poor” lab (equipped with easily accessible tools, materials and reagents) was used to relate STEM activities with food and cooking process - „Preschool kitchen as a scientific laboratory”. Thanks to such connection STEM activities offered in the project might be easily re-created at home environment. Exploring basic scientific concepts related to food (e.g oxidation, fermentation, CO2, sweetness, density etc.) should not only help children to perceive food as an object of scientific investigations, but also make learning experiences meaningful, realistic, useful in real life context, and as subsequently develop healthy eating habits;3/ Learning Communities were created on different social media - 4 national and 1 international: to test and evaluate the Teaching Set. An international audience was invited to verify the resources collected by project team, exchange ideas, search for new innovative methods of teaching, design new resources. With the help of teachers network video instructions were created, to provide methodological support to everyone interested in using STEM activities in real-life context. The community will remain open after the end of the project, producing benefits even beyond the duration of the research and involving an increasing number of users.4/ Participants of Learning Community were invited to test educational effectiveness of STEM resources with children. Learning Pathways were designed as a flexible tool allowing teachers to perceive STEM education as a long-term process rather than a single experiment. Each Learning Pathway was described as a logical sequence of lesson scenarios - a kind of intellectual road which needs to be taken by a learner to master certain skills or concepts. 5/ Finally, all the described elements were integrated into one interactive, user-friendly Toolkit providing the teachers and educators with both, methodological and theoretical guidelines for early STEM education. The Toolkit is now available in 5 languages: PL, EN, ES, CA, and IT.Generally circa 1881 participants were involved in project actions, including 135 inservice teacher, 579 pre-service teachers, 636 parents and 566 children.The Klab4Kids website not only created a map of the European best practices in innovative science education methods which allows the participating universities to reinforce ECEC curricula by introducing STEM ideas into existing courses. Currently it serves as a tool to promote an international exchange of best practices in fostering active STEM learning, and to encourage teachers to find new, modern and interactive methods for effectively science teaching. In the long term, the Klab4Kids action will also contribute towards achieving the Europe 2020 education target by improving STEM skills among young people – less than 15% of pupils under-performing by 2020 – and increasing the range of innovative products that reflect societal needs.

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