Current Affairs Czech and German preschoolers reach across borders
There are many ways to bring people together, but perhaps the most expedient is when children of different countries can learn each other’s language and culture from an early age. That is exactly the aim of a project taking place in kindergartens along the Czech-German border.
Photo: www.zsliba.cz
They might not understand each other now, but Czech and German children
living just across the border from one another are being brought together
by an EU-sponsored programme that facilitates language learning and joint
activities between kindergartens. The Odmalička – or From Childhood –
project has been underway since 2007 and is being organised by the Tandem
centre an organisation established for the coordination of Czech-German
youth projects. The centre’s Petr Vaněk told us more.
“Its purpose is to get kids from preschool institutions on both sides of the border together and allow them first to have some fun, to learn something about each other and to develop some skills that could help them to be together and to help them get ready for some later cooperation between two people from two nations.”
Photo: www.zsliba.cz
40 Czech and 30 German schools are currently involved in the programme and
the primary focus is on language. The centre uses a self-developed method
of “language animation”, which is less about teaching words and more
about breaking down barriers and building understanding through play and
similarities between languages – emphasising words that the languages
both share. Maria Šíráková is the director of a school in the town of
Liba that launched the programme in 2007.
“In 2007 we found a partner – another preschool – and we’ve been meeting with them since then. The children have begun learning – or at least getting a feeling for – the German language in an unforced and playful way. And it’s not only about learning language of course, the children meet new friends, they see what the German school environment is like and their customs, and they begin to communicate in a very natural way.”
The EU has provided the project with a 450,000-Euro fund for the years
2009 to 2011, and the Tandem centre is putting it to a wide range of uses.
In addition to the continual development of the language animation method
for preschool children, much attention is also being paid to the
kindergarten teachers themselves. Seminars are organised to acquaint the
teachers with the methodology and study visits are available so that the
teachers themselves can appreciate first hand the work of their
counterparts across the border.
