"ContextThe TIK – Tradition & Innovation @ Kintergarten project started from the Europe 2020 strategy that identified, within its educational benchmarks, that by 2020 at least 95% of pre-school children of 4 years or older would participate in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC)The importance of effectively addressing the theme of ECEC where also confirmed by the conclusions of the European symposium on improving early childhood education and care that stated: ""benefits from high-quality ECEC are wide-ranging and multilevel, economic and social, for individuals and for societies"".In this field the experience of the project partner and the evidence of their everyday activities shows that quality early childhood education and care can bring the highest rates of return over the whole lifelong learning process, especially for the most disadvantaged groups.ObjectivesThe project identified and succesfully addressed three needs that play a crucial role in order to enhance the quality of ECEC:- Reinforce the capacity of preschool teachers to involve their pupils in activities that, according to appropriate didactical and communication methods, can provide an early start of the development of basic and transversal competences- Raise childrens families awareness of the importance that ECEC can have for the preparation and the passage to primary school and for the integration in the social life- Develop pre-school children cognitive skills through the implementation of cooperative learning experiences, aimed at integrating the normal activities with relational and richer verbal interactions between pupils with a special focus on those coming from disadvantaged backgroundsNumber and type/profile of participants The project, exceeding by far its initial yet ambitious expectations has directly involved in the project activities and impacted on, a total of: - 50 kindergartens - More than 100 pre-school teachers - More than 1000 pupils - More than 200 among parents, grandparents, relatives and child-carersRepresenting 4 different European countries and many more different nationalities and culturesPotential stakeholders, to be estimated in more than 40 000 individuals and 400 institutions have been reached through the dissemination activities.Activities and related OutputsProject partners experts cooperated at transnational level in order to produce and make two Guides for the innovation of pedagogical approaches in ECEC directly available and accessible for free and without limitation on the TIK Portal.- Teachers’ Guide (https://tik.pixel-online.org/teachers_guide.php) providing pre-school teachers with a consistent set of learning materials to develop the necessary skills for improving achievement in basic cognitive and transversal skills of their pupils in early childhood education, through a fruitful cooperation with the pupils families- Family caregivers of pre-school pupils Guide (https://tik.pixel-online.org/families_guide.php) in order to raise their awareness on the importance that pre-school has in developing cognitive and pre-cognitive skills that are fundamental in the transition to compulsory schoolProject partner partners have also worked in close cooperation with pre-school teachers and children families, to develop IO 2 - Didactical Toolkit addressed to preschool pupils. The Toolkit contains didactical materials presenting traditional tales both of the local area in which the children live in and of the countries/traditions of the children from other countries and/or ethnic groups who are present in the participating schoolsThe Toolkit combines:- Exemplary materials related to the methodology adopted for implementing the storytelling activity carried out in each kindergarten https://tik.pixel-online.org/storytelling.php including the collection of drawings / collages / clay sculptures with which children will have represented their understanding of the tale itself- Media based products presenting selected tales through a visual based storytelling and the text of the tale to be used by educators to transfer the contents at transnational level https://tik.pixel-online.org/storyplot.php Results and impactThe TIK project successfully impacted on its target groups by:- Strengthening the capacity of pre-school teachers and of pupils’ families to build cooperation patterns- Providing pre-school pupils basic and transversal competences through the transnational comparison of traditional tales linked to the local territory in which they live with the ones linked to the cultural backgrounds of pupils coming from other countries/ethnic minorities- Enhancing pre-school comprehension and communication through innovative audio-visual based approaches and tools- Promoting a multidisciplinary and holistic approach to pre-school education supported by innovative pedagogic materials and references methodological concepts in order to develop children’s cognitive and social skills"