AÑA - Longing for the Explorer Tribe

What is AÑA?

It is an educational project that promotes the development of entrepreneurial competencies in Early Childhood Education students, using the creation of a tribe in the classroom as the central theme. The mission of this tribe is to explore and understand their immediate environment. Throughout this process, students discover their abilities, explore their emotions, and get to know their surroundings. By the end of the project, students, guided by their teachers, are capable of generating initiatives and carrying out new activities or projects involving people outside the classroom as well, thus encouraging teamwork and cross-curricular collaboration.

General Objectives

• Contribute to the physical, emotional, social, and intellectual development of children through the development of entrepreneurial skills alongside peers and members of the educational community.

Specific Objectives

• Gradually acquire abilities such as decision-making, assuming responsibilities, and perseverance in their daily activities.

• Facilitate the development of other entrepreneurial skills: teamwork, risk-taking, motivation, perseverance, creativity, organization and planning, communication, and observation.

• Build an accurate self-image.

• Interact with others on equal terms and practice peaceful conflict resolution.

• Communicate and experiment with different languages and forms of expression.

• Explore different environments, expanding their curiosity and appreciating diversity.

• Begin to develop logical-mathematical skills and literacy.

Timeline

The Explorer Tribe is carried out over the course of one term, and its implementation can be adapted to the first, second, or third term. Some schools choose to carry it out throughout the entire school year. The schedule of stages and activities is as follows:

Methodology

The Explorer Tribe follows the following methodological principles:

• Holistic: aims to bring children closer to their social and natural environment without fragmenting reality, in order to develop their abilities. It also seeks the involvement and coordinated work of all project participants.

   

• Meaningful: takes the students' developmental level and prior knowledge as a starting point. It builds on their interests, needs, demands, and expectations to generate new learning experiences.

   

• Cooperative: encourages learning from and with others. It fosters teamwork and solidarity among classmates. To achieve this, autonomy, positive interdependence, face-to-face interaction, shared responsibility, social skills, and reflection on personal and group work are emphasized.

   

• Active: promotes participation through values such as respect, inclusion, active listening, empathy, and freedom. This enables students to express themselves, ask questions, experiment, and investigate. Learning happens through individual and group experiences.

   

• Playful: uses play as a common form of interaction among young children, allowing them to explore the world around them, stimulate creativity and imagination, and reduce the fear of failure.
   

Materials

For Students

All support materials in The Explorer Tribe are available to teachers for use in the development of the project. Additional resources are also provided for classroom implementation:

• Pedagogical worksheets: resources that teachers can use and/or adapt to deepen various contents and/or milestones of the project. This set of eight worksheets can be freely used to support the development of the different stages of the project:

  • Worksheet 1. Routines.
  • Worksheet 2. What we need.
  • Worksheet 3. First this, then that.
  • Worksheet 4. Where we’re going, there are rules.
  • Worksheet 5. Our map, our school.
  • Worksheet 6. The tribe’s treasures.
  • Worksheet 7. Everything in its place.
  • Worksheet 8. Puzzle.
    
     

For Teachers

A teaching guide is available as a specific manual for educators, published in Spanish, which covers the four stages of the project:

-    Stage 1: Starting Point
-    Stage 2: The Tribe
-    Stage 3: Let's Explore!
-    Stage 4: Our Project

Additionally, support is provided for following up on the work in The Explorer Tribe through visits and online mentoring conducted by Valnalón's technical staff. Valnalón delivers three workshops in the classroom to explore certain contents and/or milestones in more depth:

-    Workshop 1. The Tribe.
-    Workshop 2. We meet an entrepreneur.
-    Workshop 3. The result of our reflection is…