Ruoholahti Päiväkoti
By Maria José Ortega

This is a center which offers various services to the area: day care of children between 1 and 6 years old, also offering an enlargement of this service in the afternoon, and working as a leisure center for young students after they leave school in the afternoon.
It has a big exterior space to play, with installations of all types.

As per the children between 1 and 6 years old, the center has a group for children between 1 and 3 years old and three groups for children between 3 and 6, with the pre-scholar children integrated in the latter. One of these groups also attends the children in the afternoon.

Its work methodology is through projects. These arise from the interests and needs of the children, and they work at distinct levels according to the children’s possibilities. The children’s interests mark their rhythm and duration. Sometimes they start with an extense project and carry on working in parts of it, with particular themes that keep growing and carry them to new aspects of the work.

We see their files. Each theme is treated from an approach of plastic expression, music, stories, experiences.... they count on the contribution of parents and, in some cases, other resources of their surroundings.

There is an extreme care over the spaces’ aesthetics, colours, decoration. The rooms are big and welcoming, and combine familiar elements: sofas, flowers, environment materials. There is a great deal of plastic works done by the children, pretty and creative. We also find different spaces to rest and intimacy, spaces shared by children and adults, and the spaces for older children are also prepared to favour resting, and their relationship.

To return to the Images of the visit
Trip To Finland with the magazine Infancia from the Taechers’ Association Rosa Sensat. April/May 2002
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