(Pond Park is currently also developing links in the USA and Sri Lanka.)

 

Comenius projects provide opportunities to travel and for children and adults to learn about different countries and cultures and to share the best of each through collaboration. But more than that, they foster attitudes that view diversity with interest and an opportunity to learn rather than regarding differences as something to be distrusted and challenged.

 

Pond Park Nursery School is situated in the City of Lisburn which is 10 miles from Belfast, Northern Ireland. Our school offers 104 places to children between 3 and 4 years of age. Despite their young age, many of the children have a well developed European and Global awareness and are sensitive to the differences and similarities between countries and cultures. Their understanding and acceptance of cultural differences has been nurtured and developed through the school's involvement in a Comenius project funded by the Education Department of the European Union.

 

It is never too soon to plant and nurture the seeds of interest, understanding and acceptance in the minds of young children. We are privileged to be involved in a Comenius project that enables us to do just that.

 

 

The young children have shown us through their creative talents that language barriers to communication can be overcome. Indeed they have demonstrated the significance of our project title: Loris Mallaguzizi, the founder of the Reggio philosophy, maintained that children have many ways to express themselves, they have 100 languages!

 

Building European contacts: through Comenius 2.2 courses our school principal and several teachers learned about the Reggio Emilia Schools of Northern Italy, with a focus on a creative and child-centred approach to schooling.

 

Following up on contacts developed on these courses, we arranged study visits, and hosted parties of teachers from Sweden, Finland and Greece. What we have seen, done and spoken about has influenced the way our school is run and every aspect of school life.

 

The Italian visit has inspired us to look twice at how we use design when we make additions to the playground or classroom.

 

Our project involves children exchanging their own opinions, ideas and information about their own schools and towns. The exchanges are made through creative mediums of construction, art, music, and story telling.

 

Samples and photographs of the children's work are made into booklets which are then sent to the children in the partner schools. Recordings of the children singing are also exchanged between schools.

Our Comenius partners from Sweden and Finland visited Pond Park Nursery school in October 2004 and brought with them two little teddy bears: Bjorn from Sweden and Sisu from Finland, the teddies became firm friends of the children in our nursery school.

 

Teddy bears are the means through which we exchange the children's work. The teddies have to take the project materials from one school to another. On return to their own school the teddies' travel stories and photographs help to develop the children's understanding about methods of travel and knowledge of different countries, climates and languages.

In May 2005 all participating partners met in Sweden for a joint evaluation meeting. We all agreed that our own professional and personal development had been served as a result of our involvement in the Comenius Project.

 

 

There was a general consensus that in all three schools the materials have generated parental interest within the school community and widespread interest within the local and education community, including the School Inspection Services. During a recent inspection of Pond Park Nursery School, the inspectors showed great interest in the children's Comenius Project work and were keen to learn more about the education systems in Sweden and
Finland.

 

We were delighted to have the opportunity to spend time in the school of our Swedish partners and to meet the children that we had heard so much about and whose work is displayed in the schools of Finland and Northern Ireland.

In one classroom children had been studying castles and we were particularly interested to see that they had included pictures and paintings of Dunluce castle, a historical site in Northern Ireland which had been visited by their teachers the previous October.

 

The school was set amongst trees on a hill overlooking the town and the lake. There was a little stream running down from the hill and through the grounds and tiny little white flowers (vitsippa) were growing everywhere.

Small log cabins are used by the children as playhouses and fallen trees are used imaginatively to extend play opportunities. As in Finland, there is much emphasis on outdoor play and healthy lifestyles. The babies sleep outside every day no matter what the weather, and salads are the norm for school dinners!

 

Friendships formed with American delegates at the Reggio Conference in April 2004 led to information about an American Reggio List Serve to which the principal signed up on her return home from Italy. The List Serve is hosted by the Early Childhood and Parenting (ECAP) Collaborative at the University of Illinois. It provides access to an online discussion group for people interested in Reggio inspired pre-school education. There would appear to be
a strong commitment to Reggio amongst many teachers in the States.

 

As a result of the Reggio List Serve regular communications have been established between a Reggio inspired pre-school in Richmond Virginia and Pond Park Nursery School. The Principal has successfully applied for a Fulbright grant to enable her to participate in a work shadow experience in the Richmond school during the autumn term of 2005.

 

Our Comenius partners in Sweden and Finland are keen to know more about the
American school and in turn the American school is keen to learn more about Scandinavian schools. Perhaps next year our European network will be extended to America and teddy bears will be crossing the Atlantic with the children's project materials and CDs for Tsunami!

 

During the past four years our school has developed a network of international contacts between pre-school teachers in Europe and the United States of America. The growth of the network is the direct result of the nursery staff's involvement in various Socrates programmes. Now that network has come together in a joint effort to help young children in Sri Lanka who
were victims of the tsunami disaster in December 2004.

 

The aim is to make and sell a CD of international nursery rhymes and use the proceeds to help fund the building of a nursery school in Sri Lanka. To date we have five countries that have agreed to contribute nursery rhymes to the CD: Sweden, Finland, Holland, Germany and Northern Ireland. We are hopeful that through European networking more countries will become involved, and that the CD will be launched and ready for sale in the near future.

 

We chose Sri Lanka as the country to focus on because we have a personal connection with that country. During the summer term of 2001 the nursery staff worked with a resident artist to explore creative approaches to learning and visual expression. Our artist colleague was from Sri Lanka and consequently when the tsunami devastated her country last Christmas we felt we wanted to help.

 

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