Award for e-twinning project that makes maths, ICT, fun

A fun, activity-filled, media-rich e-twinning project for pre-school children initiated by Miriam Schembri, a teacher at St Thomas More College's Fgura Primary School 'A', has been awarded second prize in the maths and science category of the 2009 e-twinning European awards. Besides the Fgura school, the other project participants come from the UK, Italy, Spain, Poland, Lithuania, and Iceland. A pre-school from Canada also joined the team recently.

In the project, entitled 'One, two, buckle my shoe', children are encouraged to explore and discover fascinating mathematical concepts in an interesting enjoyable way through interactive and hands-on activities that makes maths a seamless part of the children's play.

They invent and play a series of maths-related games, learn a number songs and perform other activities, which they share with with other participants through video clips and video conferencing.

In so doing, the young children develop information and communication technology (ICT) skills and become aware of different European cultures and languages.

The use of stop motion animation has fascinated the children and they participate enthusiastically in the making of number animations. As the project has progressed, the ICT skill and experience of children in all partner schools have been improving exponentially. The rapid skill development confirms the unique way in which e-twinning promotes creative learning and teaching development.

For more information on the project and e-twinning programme, view the websites http://twinmath.wikispaces.com, and www.etwinning.net/en.