Kindiedays had the opportunity to discuss with Kristi Stahl from Väike Päike network of preschools and childcare centers in Estonia about their goals for supporting the children, developing their business and their practical experiences. Here is what she told us.
Tell us about Väike Päike and yourself
Väike Päike is a network that provides a wide range of support services to children and their families in Tallinn, Harju County, and Tartu. Our organization includes nine daycare centers, two kindergartens, and a hobby school. We also educate parents by offering free lectures on a wide area of topics related to parenthood, organize open family days twice a year, and are currently launching our virtual kindergarten platform for online learning and development.
Our hobby school welcomes children from 3 months to 9 years, daycare centers from 1,5 to 3 years, and kindergartens from 3 years to 7 years. Our daycares and kindergartens have around 750 children enrolled. Our main idea is that the foundation for success, happiness, and emotional balance is laid in the early years before school. A lot of children spend most of their awake time in childcare, it is essential that the teachers and nannies understand the importance of their role and use this responsibility consciously.
My main role in Väike Päike is in public relations: I am responsible for external communication, writing articles, and blog posts, communicating with parents and politicians, trying to participate in national legislation as a consultant, etc. My second role is to launch the virtual kindergarten platform we have been working on for quite some time. The Coronavirus crisis made it clear that this kind of online platform for Estonian-speaking children, made by Estonian kindergarten teachers is essential for the new and changing world.
What are your goals for supporting the children?
Our main goal is to support the whole family starting from pregnancy and up to school. We value science-based teaching and have a wide range of supporting specialists that help develop our curriculum. We consider the development of the brain and the development of the ability to regulate emotions to be particularly important - our emotion regulation program sets us apart from others. One of our daycares is an outdoor daycare where children and teachers spend most of their time outdoors. This kind of daycare is very well known in the Northern countries, but Estonia has only a few so far.
What are the cornerstones of your curriculum?
We use project-based learning and follow the interests of children to determine the project for every month. It provides extensive knowledge not only in one selected field but also uses integrated learning opportunities to conduct all sorts of learning activities.
We consider digital learning opportunities, robotics, and teaching digital security very important. We try to pass the knowledge of how to act safely and in an age-appropriate manner in the digital space to all our children.
Thirdly, I would like to highlight the topic of environmental education in our curriculum. The environment and how to care for it should be part of the basic knowledge of every child. We truly believe that we help to create a better future for our planet by raising more informed children.
What triggered you to look for a new mobile/digital solution? What opportunities did you see? How did you look for solutions?
We were looking for an open and simple solution that would offer parents the opportunity to be easily involved in the daily life of the kindergarten. Parents want to know what their child is doing during the day. Estonian digital solutions often remained too concise and did not offer a sufficiently individual approach to each child. We were looking for a solution that would allow us to share pictures, emotions, and each child's individual development instantly - so that the parent could see what and when was being done with their child, how was their mood, or what did they eat.
It was clear that creating such a platform ourselves would take a lot of resources, we looked for solutions from outside and found Kindiedays that ticked all the boxes.
How did you start using Kindiedays?
Our biggest unit – Väike Päike Kindergarten near Tallinn, in Viimsi run a trial this spring and quickly realized this was a way to move forward. Starting from September 1st, all our teachers are involved with Kindiedays and are using it daily. We also launched Kindiedays app in Estonian for families at the beginning of September and, according to our staff, almost immediately most of the families have been acquainted with the new program well and checked it regularly.
Other units, such as daycares and kindergartens in Tartu are also moving steadily towards introducing the program to staff and families.
What has turned out to be most valuable for you?
Overall, the impression of Kindiedays and its effect on bringing kindergarten and families closer to each other is very positive.
Our manager Kärt Kukk from Viimsi kindergarten comments:
“I can see each child’s personal portfolio as well as curriculum reports that are great tools for teachers to analyze work that has been done so far and plan the work ahead. And, I can quickly check how many kids are present in each group. I can see easily what each group has been doing during the day – Learning posts and Daily report posts are being done daily. It is a great tool not only for parents but for teachers too.”
From the teacher’s perspective, the program eases the process of educational documentation – all the posts and photos will be saved in the child’s portfolio. Although typing and writing personalized posts might be time-consuming, teachers feel that it is well worth it. Individual approach is something that we have been pushing for quite a long time now and Kindiedays serves this purpose. Thanks to Kindiedays teachers do not need to keep the list of kids on paper and cross out the ones who have left in order to keep track of the number of kids present. Just a tap on a phone does the magic!
Thanks to Kindiedays, families will not only know what their kids are doing but also how did they perform and enjoyed it. In addition to that, teachers can quickly share photos and videos of the child either working on a task or having fun outdoors. It goes without saying that each parent values such immediate emotions captured in a photo. It really cheers up a parent’s day. Also, by having the topics and learning objectives written out, families can continue supporting kids on the same topic at home.
So, what are your final thoughts?
"Naturally, we come up with new needs and ideas as we are getting more used to the program. We are a demanding customer and it is our best hope to develop the product even further together with Kindiedays so it would not only be beneficial to us but to other future customers as well. The cooperation with the Kindiedays team works flawlessly and we are very grateful for the such great support." Kristi Stahl from Väike Päike concludes.
PS Väike Päike is Estonian and means Little Sun!
