Last week Kierna and Beverley from Nursery travelled to Norway to take part in the 4th mobility of our Erasmus Plus KA2 Project - Full Steam Ahead. This project involved kindergartens from Iceland, Belgium, Norway, Croatia & England. So far the partners have met up in Iceland, Belgium and here at Windmill. Our school was very lucky to be involved with the kindergarten in Eikefjord, Norway in a previous project that ran from 2004-2008 and during that time staff visited in May 2006 and Kierna went to work with the outdoor class in 2008.
On the first day we took the bus to Eikefjord from Floro and went to visit the kindergarten, which has had a brand new extension added on to the original building. We spent the morning touring the preschool and meeting staff and children and going on a short walk with 2 of the classes into nearby woods. It was wonderful to see children climbing trees, playing in a small river and enjoying being outside.
Dag, one the teachers at the preschool cooked our lunch under the ground in a fire pit! We had pork ribs and it was just delicious. That afternoon we hiked up to the top of a nearby hill (we would call it a mountain here!) to see sunset and the view was amazing.
On the second day we visited another bigger school that is a primary and kindergarten - they had children aged from 1-12 in this school. The school had a very calm feeling to it, with lots of neutral colours and a homelike feel. We went back up the hill again with the outdoor class in the snow and ice to see where they play when going into the woods. Again, I was struck by how happy the children were to be outdoors without a lot of resources to play with, they were climbing trees, sitting on logs chatting to friends or just exploring nearby.
That evening our Norwegian hosts made us the most beautiful meal out in one of their houses in a little outdoor cabin - we had deer stew with rice and afterwards each partner made a short presentation about their schools.
Our 3rd day was a cultural day and we went on an amazing visit to some nearby fjords and up in a cable car to the top of Loen skylift. The view from the top was incredible and the snow was so deep and glittery. The scenery was just amazing.
Our last day was spent doing some Steam activities with the older children, we had brought a dice with 6 colours on it, some liquid paint and pipettes and the children rolled the dice named the colour and then used the pipette to draw up some paint to colour the snow. It was a lot of fun but as it was -6 the water colours began to freeze!
The English partners did some tin can cooking, the Belgians some experiments with balloons. the Icelandic team had a matching game with animals and letters and the Croatians had an art activity and story retelling with Stickman. It was so much fun being with the children. Our hosts again provided a beautiful lunch before we received our certificates of attendance.
That evening Beverley and some of the others went skiing and snowboarding while Kierna and some others went for coffee and did some shopping.
We had a fantastic visit and it was as inspiring this time as it was in 2006 and 2008, our next mobility with this project is to Croatia in June.
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