Last week 3 members of staff travelled to Bursa in Türkiye to take part in the 3rd LTT meeting of our Erasmus Plus KA201 Project, SESDECE Social & Emotional Development at Early Childhood Education. This project is with partners from Turkey, Lithuania, Hungary & Italy.
Kierna & Enda from Nursery & Mrs Vanda Tate from P1 took part in meetings & workshops over week as well as visiting some schools & preschools.
Bursa has a population of 3 million & none of the staff had ever been in such a busy city but the Turkish hosts could not have made us more welcome. All the staff prepared gorgeous food for us to taste in both the schools we visited - traditional food that they would enjoy at home with friends. The preschool children sang songs & played games for us.
That evening we went out for a traditional Bursa meal, an Iskender Kepab in a beautiful restaurant.
On the second day we visited Bursa Uludag University & did some more activities to help everyone get to know each other better. The coordinators from each school went to meet the Director of the University & then the university preschool.
On the third day we got to have a lot of fun! Dr Nuray Koç did some amazing activities with us based on The Colour Monster. We listened to the story, played some games & made our own monsters. Each of the partners was given a different picture book to develop activities to do with pupils & families - our book was called ‘Fergal is Fuming’ & we had a lot of fun making dragons from junk material & reading the story to the others. We got some really good ideas for activities to do from the other books too & these will all be gathered together in one collaborative piece.
On the fourth day we heard from the Turkish Education Ministry about a new initiative they have introduced to help families understand how to help their children settle into preschool & school. We all shared how we settle children in in each of our schools. Again this project will create a common guide that will help others during this adaptation (settling in) time.
On the final day we worked in our school teams to write Action Plans for our own schools - we have lots of great ideas to help everyone settle more easily. We all received our certificates & diaries for 2023.
That evening we had a delicious farewell meal in another beautiful restaurant.
We were very fortunate to visit a UNESCO World Heritage site at Cumalikizik Village & it was like stepping back in time. We also had a great tour around the city, it’s largest Mosque with 12 domes & the Grand Bazaar, on the Friday we went up Mount Uludag in cable cars - there was even a tiny bit of snow at the top.
Enda, Vanda & I had a fantastic visit to Türkiye & would definitely love to visit again.
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