"<< Objectives >>The Little Einsteins Project aims to implement innovative teaching/learning methods and create a learner-centered learning environment, developing 21st century skills, which are students' learning skills, literacy skills and life skills, and teaching children the tools to construct knowledge on their own.<< Implementation >>Activities will be carried out in 4 main areas at LTTs within the scope of the project.These areas are Nature, Robotic Coding, Art and Stem.Each country will organize training and workshops on an activity on a field.Good practices will be shared in these activities.Dissemination activities will be carried out to increase the impact of the project.The booklet of ""Science activities guide in kindergartens"", the final product of the project activities, will be an important resource for pre-schools.<< Results >>The Little Einsteins Project will create a learner-centered learning environment by applying innovative teaching/learning methods, as opposed to the memorization approach that traditional teaching methods impose on students. This project will develop students' 21st century skills, which are learning skills, literacy skills and life skills, and will contribute to teaching children the tools to build knowledge on their own."

"Context:For any early childhood education setting - nursery or pre-primary school - to be successful, parents’ involvement is much needed. It outstandingly makes the difference. It is a powerful lever any community can use to create meaningful improvements in children education, care and learning. It includes the parental efforts and attitudes that impact children at home in their daily routine. Parents’ high expectations in early childhood education and care (E.C.E.C.) account for the most important part. The parents’ relationship with school: communicating with educators, attending school events, participating in school governance and strengthening children’s skills and learning achievements is essentai for pupils'growth. Education settings and programmes having a high level of quality are positively associated with children’s emotional, cognitive and behavioural development, with disadvantaged children benefiting the most. Research evidence currently suggests that a strong and consistent home–school relationship is the preliminary step to successfully reach that high level quality. That was the core of the Erasmus+ project “Caring Well Together – A successful alliance of supportive educators” and the file rouge that all partners have been weaving throughout this three year long project (including the COVID-19 pandemic period) of short-term mobilities and jobshadowing, plenary workshops, exchange and comparison of best practices regarding parental involvement in school pedagogy even during the COVID-19 period and the transition to distance learning. Many parents have had to contend with an unexpected situation in which the boundaries between school and home have been blurred and changed radically. The final output is the Final Handbook, which has come into being during this hard time of the pandemic crisis. Its pedagogical content is the synthesis of the rich array of ideas and activities carried out by the partners’ school educators in order to both keep alive their relationship with families and help parents create a new learning framework at home for their children, successfully enjoying their time together. This unique Handbook has been targeted at:- parents in order to help them and have continuous learning for kids (kindergarten-homekindergarten-home);- educators in order to ensure professional development to educators that didn't have the chance to take part in this partnership.Project's objectives: 1. To exchange best practices between partner countries;2. Improve teacher qualification;3. To analyse and to carry out a comparative analysis of activities involving parents carried out by participating kindergartens;4. To write an Handbook summarizing the best practices identified and addressed both to educators and parents.The educators have seen their expertise improving all along the development of the entire project, going from the efficient use of IT tools to share ideas from the planned moments of actual training.The planned activities:The planned activities were conceived in such a way as to lead to the achievement of the project's objectives through a gradual process which ensured the partners' profound appropriation of the project's working methods and objectives. Day after day, the educators got used to sharing ideas, to being actors in a peer-to-peer learning process (in a European dimension) which allowed them to get to know new realities and at the same time to focus on the peculiarities of their educational environment. The first six months of the project were conducted only through a distance cooperation between the partners, using in particular the eTwinning portal. This tool allowed the partners to identify common pedagogical issues and specific needs of their local context related to the parent-child relationship. They then carried out a comparative analysis and laid the groundwork for improving the approaches used.Institutions and people involved in the project presented themselves on the eTwinning portal.For example, through eTwinning cooperation, the partners investigated:1. their respective family models;2. their educational models;3. developed a questionnaire for parents to measure their expectations and willingness to become more involved in the project;4. their good practices: identified, collected and shared.This first analysis given them the first elements to design a common project: a handbook of suggested methods and activities involving Parents. The core of the project were the short-term mobilities of the kindergarten teachers. They represented an unique way for the educators to be accompanied and trained by an external educationalist (during the two plenary workshops) and to get an unique training on the job working in the partners kindergartens. The training conducted during the mobilities were aimed also at identifing tools (e.g. specific activities to be developed by the participating kindergartens or a set of coordinated activities involving local communities) able to face the subject matter of Parenthood. These tools were developed in the Handbook. The mobilities were designed in order to deeply respect the different rhythms and needs of the involved Partners, but at the same time, in order to ensure that all of them fully benefited of this training opportunity and got the best possible impact from the project. To this end, teacher and educators were selected in order to take part in short-term mobilities and workshops.Project's results and its expected longer-term benefits:Through the project, the partner educators, in close cooperation, tried to overcome a critical problem concerning children's development in relation to their educational environment, namely the need to involve parents more in educational activities. Starting from the identification and shared analysis of needs, the partners, through the exchange of good practices, improved the qualification of teachers by providing solutions by identifying best practices, also included in the Handbook, addressed to both educators and parents. In the long-term, educators partners see that this project will help the involved institutions to build internationalcooperation contacts, experience and learn from other kindergartens and institutions, use the best practices and ideas gathered in their daily work and increase the quality of their teaching and operating. Through this project and the planned training activities, the institutions will get qualification as teaching staff. As the institutions have parents, who are involved in the school life, the partner kindergartens are looking forward to creating the most organized system through the experience in this project and partners involved in the project. Even if the training activities and the mobilities will no longer be possible, the kindergartens plan tokeep on cooperating remotely through eTwinning. They will integrate the project results in their pedagogical approach and implement one or more best practices of their partners. The cooperation through eTwinnings will enable them to continuously keep in touch and share suggestions on the activities implemented and more generally to consolidate their ""Supportive caring alliance model"" described in the Best practice handbook."

A recent report WHO on childhood overweight and obesity stands for the fact that childhood obesity is one of the most serious public health challenge of the 21 century. Obesity affects children's physical health, social, emotional well-being and self-esteem and it remains into adulthood. It leads to poor academic performance and a lower quality of life of the child. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4408699/).Based on the EU proposal that high quality services early childhood education and care is an essential foundation for all children’s successful lifelong learning (http://ec.europa.eu/assets/eac/education/policy/strategic-framework/archive/documents/ecec-quality-framework_en.pdf) and all 3 partners concluded that kindergarten is the space where children spend most of their time and that teachers are responsible to provide meals and dedicate time for physical activities although they lack proper qualification. The need is to adjust the curriculum and class schedules and train staff in order to include physical activity and offer access to affordable healthy food in kindergartens. Therefore, the project proposes a cross-sectorial partnership which involves kindergartens and relevant partners for exchanging best practices in promoting healthy eating habits and encourage physical education from early childhood.Gen.OTo promote a healthy diet and a physically active lifestyle among children aged 3-7 by strengthening the skills of educators to better fulfill their professional role in contributing to a healthy child growth during 1.11.2019- 1.07.2021.O1. Empower 12 educators&child care professionals from 3 partner institutions on improving the education on healthier food choices and physical activity at kindergarten by exchanging best practices and participating to learning trainings during project implementation. O2. Encourage healthy diet habits and regular physical activities by involving 500 preschool children, parents and grandparents (focusing on lower socio-economic groups) in activities dedicated to create long-term strategies at the school community level, in all partner countries in order to prevent obesity and overweight until the end of the project. O3. Increase the capacity of 3 partner institutions to better implement Erasmus+ projects and to cooperate at international level during project’s implementation. DTG: educators - to ensure quality services for early childhood developmentITG: parents and children to be aware of the consequences of obesity and adopt heathy habits In the 3 short term- exchange will participate 12 educators (4 from each partner institution) with age from 18 y.o. and no maximum age limit requirement. The short-term exchange mobilities will take place in each partner country (1st Mobility dedicated to nutrition education held in Spain on 16-20 March 2020/ 2nd Mobility dedicated to physical activity education held in Romania on 8-12 June 2020/ 3rd Mobility dedicated to both nutrition and physical education held in Turkey on 21-25 September 2020) with a duration of 5 days with activities aiming to integrate healthy eating habits and encourage physical education in pre-school education. The mobilities will have a theoretical part that consist in discussions, debates, presentations, sharing best practices among educators, parents and experts/ professionals in nutrition and physical activity (motor skills, sensory learning) and a practical part (training on the job) through workshops inside/outside classroom, with children and parents participation. Methodology: presentations, discussions, debates, evaluation, games, role play, active play, cooking, reflection sessions, active play, treasure hunt, body movements. Results:-3 Thematic Workshops /every partner institution family aiming to engage educators, children and parents aiming to put in practice the methods developed in the mobility -1 Awareness Campaign Kids Marathon aiming to raise awareness and promote a regular physical activity and adopt a healthy diet from early childhood in the local community -2 Booklets 20 ideas of creative active play in kindergarten and at home/ 20 steps in adopting a heathy diet in kindergarten and at home ImpactParticipants will develop a sense of autonomy and responsibility by producing positive change in the lives of the children, giving them a chance for a healthy start in life. The partner institutions will increase capacity of managing the project and build network of reliable partners in order to apply further projects, increased operational capacity to implement E+ projects and to coordinate a Strategic Partnership. Indirect target group (children, parents, stakeholders) will observe positive differences on decreasing obesity rate in partner institutions. The project also highlights the EU Action Plan on Childhood Obesity 2014-2020 that is to contribute to halting the rise in overweight and obesity in children and young people (0-18 years) by 2020.