Award for Educational Excellence and Innovation
- The educational project Crearte by Los Sauces de Valdemoro infant school in Madrid named winner in second year of awards
- Recognition for the most innovative and successful experiences at an international level with children aged 0-3
Madrid, 8 May 2016. Los Sauces de Valdemoro infant school in Madrid, managed by Clece, has won the Award for Educational Excellence and Innovation organised by the World Association of Early Childhood Educators, AMEI-WAECE, and Hermex Ibérica. The recognition was for the Crearte project, aimed at stimulating children’s creativity.
The award was presented during the AMEI-WAECE conference, held in Madrid on 7 and 8 May. “We want to dedicate this award to all those educators and teachers, men and women, who give their all, personally and professionally, to children,” commented the centre’s director, Pilar Rodríguez Jiménez, who forms part of the managerial team of this educational experience alongside Laura Gonzalez Duque and Ana Maria Motilla Martin.
With the name Crearte, “the project seeks to be a tool to help children develop all their artistic and creative abilities,” Pilar explained. “The main aim is to waken their enthusiasm and excitement for creating art.” Developed throughout the school year, the project is divided into four main blocks, each lasting two months: Musical art; art as sculpture; the art of painting; and the art of cooking. Musical art consists of showing children different musical instruments and letting them discover how they are played and what rhythms they can make. In the art of sculpture, they handle and create different figures using a range of materials, such as modelling clay. In the section on painting, the children express themselves through various techniques, and in the art of cooking they learn about the process of handling foods to create things such as a milkshake, bread or a sponge cake.
Among the main activities, each of the flour blocks is presented with a piece of theatre. And every Friday an experience is presented, always using the surprise effect as the basis for stimulating the imagination. At the end of the course, all the work is exhibited in a classroom that they call the “Museum”, and the children’s parents can observe how the project is developing.
Originality, innovation and participation or involvement from family members are some of the criteria that were most highly value by the jury awarding the prize. With collaboration from Hermex, the aim of the AMEI-WAECE is to spread awareness of the most innovative and successful experiences, projects and materials being used in classrooms all over the world with children from 0 to 3 years of age.