Happy Encounters at By the Sea
New Nordic School, Marketing Manager, Emilia Patro Lorentz
28 January
New Nordic School opened its flagship daycare, New Nordic School By The Sea, earlier this month in Helsinki, Finland. The daycare is located in the urban Jätkäsaari neighborhood, which faces the open sea and was previously Helsinki’s main container harbor.
By The Sea daycare provides bilingual (English and Finnish language) early years education for children aged 0-6. The daycare follows Finland’s National Core Curriculum for Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC), which focuses on learning through play, discovery, interactions, collaboration, and the child’s own initiative. Kindergarten Manager, Mira Slawinski, shares;
“Happy encounters, funny situations, learning new things, and sweet comments have filled our first weeks at the daycare. Each day has brought the children, parents, as well as us teachers closer to each other. Together we have made this wonderful bilingual and multicultural daycare even stronger.”
Education Finland states that “when children participate in meaningful and relevant activities, they experience feelings of success and the joy of learning”. Instead of focusing on quantitative achievements and rankings, Finland’s early childhood centers emphasize the development of children’s soft skills such as creativity, sharing, and communication. By The Sea daycare also incorporates age-appropriate mindfulness activities to guide children to be present in the moment. Older children develop their different senses with various Montessori material. Mira adds;
“The incredible learning environment has provided us educators with a holistic opportunity to focus on getting to know each individual child. Together with the children, we have created a daycare environment where they are inspired to explore, get excited, experiment, have fun and above all - learn without forgetting the joy.”
As the overall wellbeing of the child is influenced by the relationship between the parents and the daycare educators, it is key for both parties to work closely together in the child’s holistic development. Finland’s ECEC encourages each daycare to share informal updates of each child regularly with their parents. By The Sea daycare uses the Finnish pedagogical management solution, Kindiedays, in its day to day communication with families. Mira shares,
“We have received great praise from the parents, which has empowered our staff to continue developing our family engagement, collaboration, as well as the early childhood education we provide. Our days will continue to have a lot of warm encounters, hugs, wonder, laughter and sometimes missing mom or dad a little bit. Supported by an inspiring team, one can only say that it is absolutely awesome to be a part of all that By The Sea is and represents!”
