PEDAGOGICAL PROJECT

Our project's name is Barnepark, inspired by a traditional thatch roof house located in the middle of a Scandinavian forest . The house is furnished with simple and basic fittings such as: a long table and small chairs, a sink and a cooking stove, drawings that decorate the wall, a closet, a little bookcase and few more furniture items.

Barnepark represent the real first contact between Nature and child, a pure immersion in a total and harmonic wellness that will guide the child in his evolution and growth.

The figure that accompanies us in this trip is a "Nisse" (Scandinavian name to indicate a gnome).

Barnepark project takes his origins in the Mediterranean civilization that sometimes seems to lose sight of the value of Mother Nature; the project is enriched by the Nordic cultural values in which Nature roots and identity are well established.

Barnepark is then the ideal meeting point able to connect these two worlds which seem at first sight to be logistically and culturally far from each other.

The core idea of the pedagogical project is a day care located in the middle of multi-ethnic Europe, where the "little citizen" from all the European Countries will find themselves in a common culture and rediscover the love and respect for Nature.

In a society able to look towards the future, children teach adults to find ‘the child within them’ and therefore to regain their humanity, their love for Nature and their love for other human beings.

We strongly believe in an educational system where knowledge is not passively transmitted to children but where the child is taught to become an important member of our society.

Furthermore we believe that children are capable of becoming an active part in our society. Our society will be enriched by their positive values which are: creativity, happiness, honesty, enthusiasm, and desire for human interactions.

As previously stated, in our pedagogical project the children are main actors in the educational process. When properly guided by an adult, children are capable of actively participate to this educational process which is full of experiences and knowledge.

Educational action

The educational process is shaped like a path which is walked with rationality and deliberateness. The main goal of this path is to reach specific objectives. These objectives are:

  • Consistent action by the various parties involved
  • Defining a common language
  • The feeling of belonging to a community that shares the same values.

The pedagogical project

The "Barnepark" pedagogical project places the development of personal and relational identity at the center of educational activity; its educational objectives are the foundation on which the child's educational development rests. "Only one thing to say to ourselves. That children are different one from each other, historic moments and every moment of the same child are different, countries, environments and families are different". Different languages, families, children, like a metaphor of suburbs that escape from logical centrifuges " trainer, to goad to plurally decline teaching-understanding methodologies, conceiving child like an "educator" of his educators". (Freire)In the Barnepark project, the fundamentals principles defining the daily activities of the daycare have been set out considering multiple dimensions:

  • space and time
  • social/cultural environment
  • a combination of cultures
  • family histories

The pedagogical project

Our educational choices spring from the following ideas:

  • is healthy, strong, competent, curios;
  • has his own skills;
  • is open to the new, provided with great energy and willpower to growth;
  • develops his potential by his relationships with other children, with adults and with the environment;
  • develops as a whole (psychomotor, social, emotional and cognitive skills)
  • fits easily into a multicultural and multilingual context
  • fits easily into a natural context that supports its development
  • is a protagonist who absorbs and produces knowledge

“Child is an active person since from his birth, is a citizen with his place in the society, is leading actor of rights, and society must sustain and respect him. Child is rich: born with a potential that could express in multiple languages, is a builder of consciousness, of identity, of cultures and values, finding since from his birth the sense of the world. Child is able to live, to learn, to listen and to communicate. (Irene Balanguer)

Project spaces

It is essential to create a space that takes care of children's needs and abilities that offers elements and opportunities to satisfy them. This space will combine security and care requirements with needs of exploration and knowledge, feeling of intimacy with the pleasure to get along with others.

The Barnepark pedagogical project promotes situations that produce significant relationship through:

  • by designing internal spaces
  • par le choix du matériel proposé
  • through shared external spaces
  • through thematic projects
  • through moments of routine

educational activities

As we conceive the Child to be a ‘rich person’ we recognize his ability and capability to build his own knowledge. The child is: curious, able to explore, emotionally willing to invest himself, open to a constructive criticism. The development of his skills allows him to engage in a path of knowledge towards himself, the others and the environment.

The ways in which child knowledge is promoted and encouraged are:

  • playing, music, singing, graphic expression, manipulation (wood, paper, clay, sand, natural materials, ...), symbolic games, theatre, puppets, reading, ‘nature’ language, motricity and dance, linguistic enrichment

cultural integration

Confrontation between pairs enables the child to respect other points of view, and to complete his own perspective. In this way the child overcomes his egocentrism and develops his social skills.

Multicultural integration is the central theme of Barnepark' s pedagogical project because interculturalism is a landmark for daily choices and educative proposals. On the other hand we are well aware that in our daycare each children and each family represents a "cultural world", a melting pot of identities and therefore new cultures and new differences co-exist. The crèche is also a place where parents are close to each other.
In order to keep up with a multicultural environment since early childhood, the daycare works to stress the importance of the following aspects:

  • Differences are seen as an ingredient of everyday life
  • Space makes other cultures and "childhoods" visible
  • Everyone's native language is welcome in interactions
  • Different conceptions of childhood and how to care for children can be expressed, compared and exchanged.

play areas

One of our project parts draws attention to the fact that children should be divided in different classrooms accordingly to their age. Dividing children in groups allows the teacher to be more attentive to the child development level; moreover teachers can propose activities which are more adjusted to the child age and capacities.

The day care is then divided between Classrooms that we call SectionsIn every Section, regardless of their age, the children are provided with:

  • Play area
  • Space for meals
  • Rest area
  • Space for hygiene

Each Section provides the child with a place where he will establish unique relationships and build his own identity. Moreover, each Section offers personalized areas (ex: the child’s bed, the same sitting place at the table, his personal objects) that are similar to the areas existing at home and that create sense of security in the child.

Routines

The everyday life in the daycare is dived between ‘Routines’. The routine plays an important role since it marks the time in which the child receives special attention by the teachers. This time dedicated to the child influences the relationship between the child and the teacher positively. The organization of these practices begins with the creation of a framework that gives children their first points of reference; these are concrete actions carried out in certain spaces by certain people at certain times.Routines help children understand what's happening in their lives, with whom and where. With their repetitiveness, routines mark the moments in the life of the nursery in its space-time dimension and make its affective dimension; in the flow of events, recurring routines represent constants that favor the child's memory, the ability to foresee events and to represent them. A coherent, reliable organization, adapted to the child to whom it refers, becomes a reassuring image in which the child can live intensely, with pleasure.

The Game

For children who play, there's no difference between play and what an adult might consider a job. Only later, once they come to associate an activity with a reward, do children begin to see the behavior as set up for long-term benefits rather than immediate gratification. This is due to the development of cognitive skills that enable the child to see the link between cause and effect.The Barnepark pedagogical project comprises a set of thematic projects which, in their simplicity and ease of integration, form part of the relationship with other training activities and routines.

The development of a "project" enables children to:

  • Deepen their curiosity
  • Meet different points of view on the same subject (the child's, other children's, adults', professionals' and parents')
  • Learn to concentrate, search and explore
  • Learn to share their point of view, negotiate and decide together.

Play is at the heart of all the learning processes that develop in the following areas:

Water project

Water project

Autonomy project

Autonomy project

Autonomy project

Autonomy project

project Ecology

project Ecology

Parties project

Parties project

Reading project

Reading project

Language and English project

Language and English project

Music project

Music project

Psychomotricity project

Psychomotricity project

projet Théâtre

projet Théâtre