Practice in a kindergarten

Now we have seen a Danish kindergarten for two weeks. Though it`s similar to the Norwegian kindergarten there are also some differences.

For example in the Danish kindergarten the children are more free. They have rooms in the kindergarten were the kids can play alone without the adults, kind of adult free areas. They can also be alone outside in the area of the kindergarten. If the kids want to go out they are allowed to, four kids can be out in the playingarea alone with no adults watching them. They say it is like this because they want the kinds to learn responsibility, learn them to play and work together in a group and learn them to be able to solve problems and conflicts by them selves.
This kindergarten is an old house who they have redecorated to be a kindergarten. So there are many rooms in the house. The house has three floors. 1. floor is were they have their main rooms, like drawing room, “pillow room”, music room, room with a lot of cars, lego and so on. And it is in this rooms they eat. It`s in the first floor were the adults mainly are. In the second floor lays the office and two playing rooms. But the kids can also play in the office. When someone is in the phone the kids have to be quite or else they are not allowed to be there, and they actually follow this rule. If there is a private conversation they are of course not allowed to be there. And then there is a sign outside the door who tells the children not to interrupt. This is also a part in the process of learning responsibilities and to respect the rules. Also in the basement there is a room whit a lot of pillows where they can play as much as they want.
They also say that it is a fulltime job for the kids to be in a kindergarten plying all day from 0630 until 16 30(more and more kids stay longer in kindergarten). Therefore they say they think it`s good for the kids to have the opportunity to go to a room where there are less people and where they can relax. But of course there have to be a balance between all this, and the people working in the kindergarten have to have their eyes open and see every kid and what they do, so they can prevent for example only one of the kids always hiding away from the rest of the group.

In Denmark they are all about teaching the kids to think for them selves so they can grow up being a good citizen in a democratic country.
I will short explain how this kindergarten has divided the kids and staff.
The kindergarten has four groups which is divided in colours, red, yellow, green and blue. This is the groups they stay in when they it. They have different rooms only when they eat. Each group have one pedagogue and one collaborator. These two have the responsibility manly for only these kids. When they don’t eat all the kids can play everywhere in the whole hose of the kindergarten.
In this kindergarten there works nine people. The leader, one co.leader who also works as a pedagogue on one of the groups, four more pedagogues and three collaborated. There are approximately thirteen kids on every group, and two adults.

Norwegian easter stereotypes as I see it :-)

Now it`s Easter-holiday and I want to tell you about the norwegian eastertraditions....What do we do in norway at easter?
- we go skiing
- we eat oranges
- we eat a norwegian chocolate called Kvikklunsj
- we paint eggs
- we have big paper eggs which we fill with candy and eat it at eastersaturday
- we watch a lot of "easter"-crime at telly
- we raed crimebooks
- eat good meals with family
- WE ENJOY :-)

About our subjects

Physical education as an obtional class, M7
In this class we have joined the danish thirdyear teacher students in their physical education classes. We have seen the many things they have to learn and manage. We have joined them in ball games, gymnastics, it the swimming pool crawling and even made a little gymnasticpreformance we had to preforme in front of the class.

About our subjects

Special needs, M6
In this class we we have talked about children with special needs. We even went to a danish school, Favrdalskolen, to hear about and observe the danish system.

But now I wil tell you a bit about special needs in Norwegian kindergarten:

A kindergarten for everyone:
Staff are responsible for ensuring that all children, regardless of their level of functioning, age, gender and family background, feel that they and everyone else in the group are important to the community.

Kindergartens shall provide an environment in which different individuals and different cultural expressions meet with respect for their differences.

Looking at differences and similarities can help to foster understandings and insights.

Encountering something that is different from yourself allows you to develop a positive curiosity about the similarities and differences between people and cultures.

The content of kindergartens must be communicated in a way that allows different children to participate in different ways, in line with their own interests, skills and development levels.

Instead of relocate children with special needs, we adjust the invirement so they can be a natural part of the group.

The physical environment:
Kindergartens’ physical environments shall be designed in such a way that all children have many opportunities to participate actively in play and other activities. The arrangement of the physical environment must take into account that children of different ages, and with different levels of ability, will use the same spaces.

When planning the design of a kindergarten, the societal aim of reducing barriers to people with disabilities must be taken into consideration. The planning, location and construction of new kindergartens should be based on principles of universal access.

This means that products, buildings and outdoor areas shall be designed in such a way that everyone can enjoy them equally without special requirements or tools, in so far as this is possible.

Staff:
Depending on the childs situation we have diferent posibilities:

Next to the regular staff there is one extra adult who is always next to this child to help him in everyday life.

If there is a child with special needs in the group there can be an extra adult who is there because of the child but it`s not needed to help him with everything, just support him when it`s needed.

One extra adult next to the ragular staff, to help the whole group.

There are children with learning disable, they don`t have an extra adult with them, but is taken out of the grup about two times a week.

Pedagogic- psycoligical- team (ppt):
This is a service the kinderkarten can kontakt if they think they have a child whith spacial needs.

Then the service can come to the kindetrgarten and observe the child. Then the ppt can deside which help the child need.

For example: special pedagogical team that is send in to help.

Special pedagogial team:
Each comunity has a team that containes of f.eks speacial-pedagogs, logopeds.

They travel whithin the comunity to difrent kindergartens to help the children whith special needs

The children which has extra help out of the group get helped by this team.

About our subjects

M3, Citizenship and globalisation:
As a citizen you are together with other citizen!

In this class we have among other things talked about what a democratic citizenship is?
- a citizen who has rights and duties
- first right is that of establishing the law
- first duty is that of respecting the law
- primary value: the autonomy of the individual
- ans so on

You have to fight for democracy, you are not borne in to it. They say that the western world is rich because they have democracy, they have not democracy because they are rich....

We also talked about how people adjust to their klimate were they live. Every group of people has adjusted to their lifestile to the climate where they live. F.eks: mongolia with their ekstreme cold winters and ekstreme hot summers.
How do they survive?
What do they learn from?
- Myth? ------->
- Religion? -------> Reality
- Common sense? ------->
- Scians? ------->
Can we learn from other cultures?

We have also talked about citizenship and how it means to stay inside the "sirkel". I will try to explain it for you: We draw a model with fire boxes:
1: Ego + individual - kapitalism/liberalistic
2: Ego + collective - modern nationalism
3: Altroistic + individual - the konservative
4: Altroistic + collective - sosialism

In all the four groups you can find the extreme way of thinking and you can find the democratic way of thinking. You are allowed to have your own way of thinking as long as you stay inside the "sirkel" by which I mean as long as you can live in a community and deal with people thinking differently than your self, and manage to contain the democratic way of thinking.
In all the four groups you will find the extreme ones. In the class we made examples from all the groups seeing if we could make them into school examples we could imagine can happening at school these days.

"Citizenship handler om å være innenfor sirkelen, hvilken meninger du har har ikke noe å si".

About our subjects

M2, Aesthetic learning prosesses:
There are many ways of learning:
- The empirical(learning by doing, learning from and through your body).
- The aesthetical(impressions transformed into meditatded expression)
- The discursive(analytical)

In the aesthetic learning classes we have been working with art, music, physical education and cooking.

In the ark class we learned to ekspress our selves through draving. We drew pictures of our selves both seeing and not seeing. We also draw a picture while the teacher told a story.

In the music class we have been working with ekspressing our selves through music and moving to music.

In the physical education class we have had a lot of fun, learning different physical games to activate the kids, learning them that pysical activities can be a lot of fun. We have also seen different activities or physical games from all the earasmus countries. Some I`ve seen before and some were totally new.

In the cooking class we were supposed to make climate friendly food. By climate friendly food I mean:

- Not to cut out any food, but to vary the food in one meal.
- It also means to eat the food which contain to the season.
- Don’t throw away food,
- And use the leftovers in a meal next day.

• eat more vegetables
• choos ecological
• eat local brands/food and season food

Our group made potatosoup with bunns, lazange with salat an a danish appelkake for dessert. It was climatefriendly because: we used local food, season food and appels which can come from your backyard ;-)

Drama:

Right after the easter hollyday we went to Aabenraa fore two days to have our drama class.
The first day we started icebreaking, followed by the consept of impulse and improvisation and working with statues and tableau`s as a part of basic elements and terminology i drama and theatre. then we had a basic introduction to process- drama.

the second day we started warming up and had a game sassion. The reste of the day we had a workshop called "body, masks and expression".
here we worked with masks. the masks we wore were leader masks, who covered the whole face, so you only had one mimic. It was really cool to see what a mask can do. You express your self only trough the body, and not by facemimics. After "practicing" with the masks on for a while, we divided in to three groups, each getting a music play. We were making a preformense based on the music. this realy made us kreative :-)

It was fun working with the masks. It was easier to preforme and show your own product, because you don`t feel that voulnerable with your mask on. and it was emasing to see the others preformense.

About our subjects

M1, Comparative studies:
In this subject we have been talking about stereotypes, the danish schoolsystem and of course compared the different schoolsystem of the people in our erasmus class. The stereotypes I have mensioned before, therefor I will tell you short about who influensed the danish school system. The danes belive in a pedagogical idealism and they follow the philosophy of Søren Kirkegård. He cared about subjectivenes and individualism. Karl Marx inspired the danish to talk about democracy. Sokrates/Platon inspired them by saing; if you want to tech someone, you have to have a dialog, an open dialog. If it`s not an open it`s just people talking...And Rousseau talking about self-reliens, so they can depend in their selves, and learn from experience and avoid verbal lessons.

We have also learned about danish "hygge", which means having a cosy time with friends and family, staying inside and lighting candles. "Hygge" is very important for the danes.

Before I finish this I have to say, though the norwegian and danish school system is quite similar it has been a pleasure listening to the other students, from countries were the school system is quite different from the scandinavian schools, telling about their system and comparing their system to the danish system. It`s interesting to listen to all of them and hear what they think about the danish system, both good and bad. Can we learn from each other??
Can we take the good stuff from every system and make one really good system?
And can we all really agree on what is the good things in the systems?
Or do we have different opinions on what is the good things and what is bad? Probably......