Nursery Life

At Carousel Nursery Schools, we strive to provide the best childcare and for children aged 1 to 7 years. Our friendly, well qualified and highly experienced teams always thrive to offer high quality care and education for all the children and their families, ensuring that parents are at ease and well informed about their child’s time at our nurseries. We consider it our privilege to care for each child and accompany them as they embark on a journey of learning and exploration in a safe, loving and stimulating environment. We can offer every child the very best start in their educational journey.

Curriculum

We follow the Finnish National Core Curriculum for Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) and the Finnish National Core Curriculum for Pre-primary Education for the preschoolers. Depending on the setting, we also follow Helsinki and Espoo City curriculums for ECEC. Together with the children and parents, we draw up action plans in the groups and settings describing our pedagogical principals. An individual ECEC plan is also drawn up for each child.

The whole day pedagogy at Carousel Nursery Schools is also influenced by the Reggio Emilia approach. The approach values a powerful image of the child, believes in reciprocal relations and collaboration and emphasizes the importance of using the environment.

Participatory pedagogy is based on listening and placing value in the child’s opinions and wishes when planning, implementing, and evaluating early childhood education and care. This approach enables the children to be active learners, co-construct their knowledge and experiences and take ownership of their learning process. Our projects are based on children’s interests and the areas of learning providing children opportunities to explore, observe, hypothesize, question, and discuss to clarify their understanding. The sense of community is highlighted as we work together on projects discussing and reflecting on events and phenomena in a group.

We recognise the inherent value and pedagogical significance of play.
Playing motivates children and brings them joy, engaging them in learning and in acquiring new information.
Playing promotes the overall development and wellbeing of children.
Play-based learning allows children to interact meaningfully in their environment and surroundings.
We encourage the children to be open minded thinkers, design and implement their own activities and approach learning in inventive ways.
Learning through play builds the children’s social and language skills, develops their sense of exploration and experimentation and their artistic and self-expression abilities.
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The Finnish National Curriculum for ECEC is based on the children’s prior experiences, interests and knowledge and skills. Early childhood education and care lays the foundation for children’s transversal competences and pedagogical activities strengthen the development of these transversal competences. In the ECEC curriculum, there are five interconnected transversal competences. The goals of these transversal competences form a continuum from the National Core Curriculum for ECEC to the core curricula of pre-primary education and basic education.

Early Childhood Education and Care

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Play is central in early childhood education and care. Play promotes children’s development, learning and well-being as well as produces joy and pleasure for children. The learning areas describe the main goals and content of the pedagogical activities in early childhood education and care. As learning is holistic and children are active agents in their learning, the themes from the learning areas are combined together and applied to practice according to the children’s interests and abilities. The children’s interests and questions form the basis for the integrative pedagogical activities. The areas of learning have been divided into five groups: 

Diverse world of languages
Various forms of expression
Our community and I
I explore and act in my own environment
I grow, move, and develop
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Pre-primary
Education

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Pre-primary education is planned and implemented to give children opportunities to be inspired, experiment and learn new things. Play and other approaches characteristic for children’s learning are the basis for integrative instruction. Children’s interests and the joint objectives for instruction form the point of departure for all learning modules. Children take active part in planning, engaging in and evaluating learning modules. The joint objectives for instruction have been formulated to five entities, the objectives and contents of these different entities are combined in a pedagogically appropriate way when forming learning modules: 

Diverse forms of expression: develop children’s skills in self-expression in music, visual arts, crafts bodily and verbal expression
The rich world of the language: support the development of children’s linguistic and interactive skills and strength their interest in languages and cultures
Me and our community: this topic is approached from historical and social as well as ethical and worldview perspective
Exploring and interacting with my environment: include learning mathematical skills and implementing technology and environmental education
I grow and develop physical perspective, food, consumer skills, health, and safety
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Typical Day

Early Childhood

A nutrious breakfast is the perfect way to start the day
After breakfast your child can explore and engage with the enviroment
Outdoor play gives children the freedom and independence to explore and be active in nature
Children continuously learn through every first-hand experience that comes into their lives
Lunch time is not only about providing a meal it can also influence children’s learning, development, health, and wellbeing.
Every child has the right and opportunity to rest and calm their mind and body
Through rich learning opportunities and experiences we can foster your child's sense of belonging, wellbeing and encourage their autonomy
We provide a healthy and well-balanced snack to the children in the afternoon to tide them over until dinner
Unstructured and child-initiated play facilitates your child to develop their imagination and sense of oneself whilst exploring the world around them
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Preschool

A nutrious breakfast is the perfect way to start the day
Each morning teachers and children in their group gather in a circle to come together and greet each other
The preschoolers engage in different projects and participate in a wide variety of other learning experiences
Lunch time is not only about providing a meal it can also influence children’s learning, development, health, and wellbeing
Every child has the right and opportunity to rest and calm their mind and body
Outdoor play gives children the freedom and independence to explore and be active in nature
We provide a healthy and well-balanced snack to the children in the afternoon to tide them over until dinner
Play in central to pre-primary education as children learn and form a perception of the world through playing
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