An early childhood educator, Adosinda Cabrita, the CCW2 facilitator in her school, and her colleagues attended the first pilot at the University of Minho. They wanted to improve kindergarten children’s happiness. To this end, they organised a co-creation group formed by themselves, the President of the Parish Council, the President of the Parents’ Association and the parents or guardians of a group of 11 children aged 4 to 6.
To collate collective narratives from adults, they had to use different co-creation tools than those used with children. Furthermore, there were limitations on the time adults could come to school. Thus, the collaborative formulation of the problem had to be done in two phases of co-creation. First, discussions were initiated with the group of co-creator adults. Then, discussions were shared with the children, who developed the ideas more deeply and passed them on to the initial adults’ group, using the “pass the parcel” methodology. They decided that the Coventry University CUbe activity would be a good instrument for this purpose. The collaboratively constructed the appropriate questions to use for these activities in the CCW2 pilot training. The children could then co-create answers to the factors that were conditioning their wellbeing and identify the problems that needed to be solved.
The presentation of the idea to the children for the co-creation project began with a conversation in a large group during their daily routine. The facilitator of the co-creation process explained to the children that she would like to carry out a project with them to help the children at the kindergarten feel happier and feel that their body and mind were well. She explained that this was called wellbeing.
Then, using the Coventry University CUbe activity, she asked each child to say, “What mascot would you like to have at school as a symbol of a child who is a friend of wellbeing?” The kindergarten teacher then wrote down what the child had said on a large sheet of paper placed in the centre of the room and asked the child to throw the CUbe to another child, repeating the process. The group’s final decision was that the mascot should be a girl. Using the same activity as the CUbe, the group decided what they wanted the girl to be like and what she should be called. The early childhood educator designed the prototype based on the students’ ideas. The children started building a 3D version of the mascot from the 2D prototype, which became a part of the group of wellbeing-friendly puppets and selected what they would wear (materials provided by the Erasmus+ CCW2 project team). Then, the CUbe was presented with the selected questions from families and the adults involved in the class.
The CUbe was used to collaboratively define the problem as a group, using two initial trigger questions: “Do you like coming to school? What makes you feel good at school?” The Early Childhood Educator read the first question from the CUbe and threw it to a child who answered. Then this child passed the CUbe to another, and so on. The children invited their classmates from the 1st cycle (6-7 years old) to write on the “ideas sheet” the ideas the younger children wanted to share.
For the next co-design phase, children were invited to share suggestions on proposed changes to the school to solve the problems initially identified by the group, which included three questions: 1) “What would you change at school to feel happier? 2) Tell me some people or things that make you happy. 3) What are the words or gestures that make you feel good?” This phase was about co-designing the solutions, including how they will be made and by whom. Several suggestions were given to improve the educational environment to make them feel happier at school: “I didn’t eat in the school cafeteria and would eat at home; we would go to the court more often to play football; we want animals at school; we needed a trampoline during recess; Have more balloons at friends’ parties; have tables during recess to have a snack and play games; change the friends who hit; spending more time in the pedagogical-garden and during recess.” After some debate among the children, they reached a consensus that they wanted to start by improving the pedagogical garden.
The CUbe activity continued to be used, but this time, they discussed how to organise the pedagogical garden: “How are we going to organise the pedagogical garden? Who will collaborate in preparing the space? Who will collect the seeds and plants? Who will help install an irrigation system?”
The pictures show some aspects of the pedagogical garden and the use of its food by children in activities that aimed to promote a healthy and environmentally friendly diet education.
