In Finland, children learn through play and we don't score children!

"Preschool educators must now ensure that cognitive, social-emotional and academic curricular goals are met within the context of children's play."

Curriculum learning areas and learning objectives guide the planning of playful activities with the children. But we don’t test how well they have reached each skill or objective.

Instead, new means and methods for formative assessment are required across the whole learning process. We want to understand how children develop and guarantee the quality of children’s learning. As well as engage families and gain their confidence. 

Pedagogical documentation, portfolios, and formative assessment give children a voice and reveal their thinking

Pedagogical documentation also known as portfolio learning is an essential working approach in early childhood education and care. 

 It is a continuous process where learning objectives, observations, documents, and their interpretation in interaction create an understanding of the pedagogical activity. 

• Is your curriculum utilized as the basis for the daily planning and activities?
• Do your teachers observe, document, and assess learning goals effortlessly?
• Do the parents know how their children progress in their learning?
• Do your children get learning opportunities in all the areas of your curriculum?
• Can you provide a competitive high-quality service?

If you answered YES to all questions, you are in good shape – congratulations!

If NOT, there is room for improvement. 

Start with Kindiedays free training and trial!

To get a smooth start, we have created a step-by-step program for you to learn and try out Kindiedays in practice.

June 2022

• We start with a kickoff session and online demo of Kindiedays 1st of June at 2 PM Helsinki time (duration 60 min).
• After the demo, you get access to a free Kindiedays trial for 30 days. You can enter teachers, a group of children, and their parents to have everything set up for the trial. You will also have access to Finnish pedagogical objectives as a reference.
• Online workshop on June 10th where we go through the importance of portfolio learning and formative assessment in early education. As well as the importance of engaging parents. Here we also show how the Educator App works and you can run your trial.
• Our experts are ready to help you and answer any questions you might have.

July 2022

• At the end of the trial period, you can make the decision to buy a commercial license at a special price. All the data you have already entered will remain.
• Online workshop on July 10th for a complete presentation of Kindiedays and how to use portfolios and reports to guarantee the quality of learning. 

See Kindiedays in action

Your price for Kindiedays after the trial is only 20 Euro/child /year. 

Sign up for the program before May 27th and we send a Zoom invitation to the kickoff 1st of June. 

Extra bonus: The first 5 to sign up, will also get a set of 20 playful lesson plans completely free.

Sign up here before May 27th!

PS If you have any questions, just drop me a mail at milla@kindiedays.com.

Kindiedays home page

In last week's blog, we discussed how to make observations and collect data on children's learning moments and consistently collect the information into a superior child's portfolio. This week we will look into how this valuable data can be used to secure the quality of the preschool.

With the help of holistic reports and statistics, you can reveal a lot of children's learning and your center's way of tackling the curriculum!

With Kindiedays reports you can:

• illustrate children's progress
• see the individual child's progress in the curriculum’s learning objectives
• review statistics on how efficiently the curriculum has been applied
• guarantee that all the learning areas are in balance
• identify possible needs for learning
• plan future learning
• guarantee holistic learning in the center

Now you can show evidence of learning to parents as well as provide a competitive and profitable pedagogical service.

Learn which reports matter, but have not had the time and tools to create and utilize.

Portfolio and pedagogical documentation go hand in hand. Both focus on making the child's learning visible and enabling professional formative assessment of playful learning.

A portfolio is a compilation of various documents that show progress on the learning goals that are defined in the curriculum.

Pedagogical documentation aims to capture meaningful learning moments. Educators should then use these documents to modify their planning so that children learn even better.

Pedagogical documentation is an essential working method in early childhood education and it guarantees the best possible learning path for children. All valuable documents can be saved in a child's personal portfolio. But what type of documents should the portfolio include?

Documentation is observing for example children’s play, projects, discussions, ideas, and inventions via taking photos, making notes, writing down explanations as well as tricky questions, saving artwork, videoing action, recording voice... 

Kindiedays Portfolio Learning

Follow a consistent process throughout the year

After the pandemic and lockdowns, many preschools feel the pain to get up to speed again. The previous working methods seem outdated. A fresh start is needed, but the task is overwhelming and time is scarce. You need a systematic approach to get a lift for your teacher, children, and parents.

Take some time with your team to define or review your goals, values, and teaching methods in written form...

1. Learning goals & guidelines

This is an important, theoretical part of the curriculum. Pay attention to the quality of research you use and also to the accuracy of learning goals. Keep in mind that it is not necessary for children to accomplish a set of learning goals in a specific order, but at their own individual pace as we all are unique learners. Discuss these topics:

• Key elements of the national early learning standards
• Relevant and up-to-date research on childhood development
• Learning goals for children in each learning area
• Description of the group of children (needs, strengths, interests...)
• Introduction of the educators

2. Values, ethos & teaching

As much as children learn from teachers, teachers learn from children. In this section of the curriculum, discuss the values and ethos of your preschool or early learning center. Open up how you communicate with the children and families, what type of behavior and cooperation you value, how you plan the activities, and what drives your work community.

For example, Finland's National Core curriculum for ECEC defines values as follows:

• The intrinsic value of childhood
• Growth as a human being
• Rights of the child
• Equity, equality, and diversity
• Diversity of families
• Healthy and sustainable way of living.

Discuss and define the values that you stand behind and list them clearly in your curriculum along with the other important framework:

• Underlying values, ethos
• Communication styles with children and families
• Teaching styles
• Planning of activities

3. Learning environments

Imagine yourself as a child and look at the classroom from different perspectives: What can the child see and reach?