The challenge

All over the world, coronavirus is tearing children's lives apart when the familiar childcare centers go into lockdown. Centers struggle to find new ways to keep the children enrolled and continue learning.

As uncertainties remain, experts suggest that a Blended Model combining traditional in-class and distance learning will most likely be the safest mainstream scenario for the coming months.

A preschool or childcare center with a creative blended approach can adapt rapidly and flexibly as the coronavirus situation evolves over time.

What is a blended model?

In the beginning of the new term familiarizing with the alphabet is a traditional theme to start with - whether children's learning is in-class, at home or a blended approach is used. Children gain interest in letters and writing in their own pace, and when they do, it is good to take advantage of their thirst for learning.

Learningmole in Youtube offers great videos for learning the alphabet. Videos are originally made for homeschooling, so to they are great for remote learning! Teacher can share the video for children who are staying home or if the situation allows - show it in class.

There is variety to choose from, but video ‘Learn the Alphabet for Toddlers’ has the classic ABC song which is awesome for toddlers! They get to hear the names of the letters and see how the letters look like together with a familiar melody. After the ABC song the video shows also Learning the Alphabet with Foods and Animals. Children can deepen their knowledge of letters and connect them with familiar words, such as D for Donut or E for Elephant.

Children who stay home can watch the 'Learn the Alphabet with Foods' video (starting from 1.05) and then search for foods shown in the video from their fridge! Children can then document back to their teacher which ones they found (eg. L for Lemon and W for watermelon) for example with a video or drawing. Kindiedays has a great messaging system, that can be used for fluent communication between home and school, also group messages between children are great for learning together. Kindiedays collects data for child's individual e-portfolio and gives teacher an opportunity to assess children's work and development.

Collaboration should be viewed as a journey, rather than a destination. It is an ongoing and developing process of finding a common ground and learning how to play off each other’s strengths to better serve the customers. Sometimes it can be hard to let someone else to take over, but like anything, trust and collaboration skills can be polished with experience.

Finnish education start-up scene lives through cooperation – it is an entire ecosystem, where the private and public work together developing real life tested and innovative solutions for the specific needs of the schools and learners. In fact, it’s very common for Finnish EdTech companies to include teachers and students in the development process of their products. Well, who would know better how to make the digital learning tools more functional, educative or fun than the users themselves?

Autumn term in Finland has now started all over the country. Kindergartens and schools started in contact teaching but are ready to switch to distance learning again in case the epidemiological situation requires.

Here is a checklist from Finnish National Agency for Education what education providers must take in account in the beginning of the new term:

PLAN & GUIDE

It is time to start planning activities for the coming term! When educators plan activities, it is crucial to take children’s views, interests, needs and ideas into consideration – otherwise the activities have no point! Each activity should have a target, a set learning goal based on curriculum (for example: Practicing fine motor skills and naming colours).

Download template for Child's Individual Curriculum

Making children’s participation stronger is one of the most important pedagogical tasks in early childhood education. Children’s opinions are being asked and listened to – but only here and there. Taking children’s views into consideration should be a systematic and continuing process in early childhood education.

Educators can find out children’s views for example by:

1. Observing children’s play
2. Following children’s conversations
3. Asking children to draw their favourite things

In case the educator notices that the children are very interested in cars...