Practical information

Welcome kids and parents

Curiousity, exciting, fear and worries. Emotions and thoughts we have with a new start at the kindergarten. This page is to comfort you :-)

First week Staff Learn to play Communication Food arrangement Safety

Learn to Play - Play to learn

You have an exciting time ahead of you, where both your child and you will experience many new things. New acquaintances and many new activities are in store for you. We who work in the kindergarten wish that this time will be as good as it can possibly be for you and that you will feel safe that we are taking care of your child in a good way. For us to make this possible, we must cooperate.

Every single child who starts kindergarten has its own experiences and values. We will take care of these, as well as teaching the children to meet other children with different experiences and values to themselves. To be a part of a larger group of children is about taking care of what makes the children unique, but also teaching them to show consideration for the others in the group.

In the kindergarten, your child will learn how to encourage their wishes and needs through interaction and playing with other children, as well as considering others. This can sometimes be difficult and challenging. But we wish to get to know you and your child so that we can work together in achieving this. We are available for you and attentive of your child.

Adapting to kindergarten

A good experience when starting kindergarten is very significant for the children, the parents and the personnel who all need to feel safe with one another.

Adaption week
We usually estimate the first week to adapt, but there are big individual differences both within the children and the parents depending on their expectations. Some children may have been away from their parents before or maybe they know the kindergarten from earlier visits with siblings, while others start from scratch and might have their very first experience with the kindergarten. It is therefore important that the time of adapting to starting kindergarten is conformed to each individual child and their needs, and that we together can come to an agreement about how to make this best for you and your child. Parents must be available in the child’s time of adapting.

We have a lot of experience with adapting to kindergarten and because of this we have some frameworks for the child’s first days here. You will receive these before your child starts kindergarten.

Staff

The staff is the most important resource.
Our job involves us working with attaining good relationships with all the children.

We are therefore working with how the employees interact with the children.

Our goal is that through interaction with us the child will attain the best possible conditions for a good self-esteem. The adults’ and children’s thoughts and feelings are just as important. They are equivalent but not equal. The adults must take responsibility for the situations.

We mean that in order to create a foundation for good relationships within the kindergarten, the children will need adults who are real, warm, interested, who dear to challenge their attitudes and values, who say yes when they mean yes and no when they mean no, who do what they say, who take responsibility for interaction with the children, who give the children what they need – not necessarily what they want, and who treat them as equal human beings.

The children’s emotional expressions will be taken seriously. We support the children through reflection and asking questions. The children are actively encouraged to express their thoughts and opinions, and we are actively working with meeting the children’s expression with recognition. Where a child’s self-esteem is violated, is the seed for recklessness, bullying and a lack in empathy.

Our star team

Meet our staff

The childrens participation

In our kindergarten, we define the children’s participation as “When children’s input and behaviour influence the adult’s planning and evaluation.”
There is a difference between a child’s participation and self-determination. To take a child’s participation seriously it means to also interpret what the child does not say. We try to take a basis in the child’s own forms of expression. We listen and try to interpret their body language and to be observant in relation to their actions, esthetical expression and eventually their verbal language. This can often take some time and we try to give space for different children’s different perspectives and show respect for their intensions and experiences of the world.
Some utterances from children will have direct consequences which might make us alter plans we have made, other forms of expression which we interpret might influence the long-term planning.
To take the children’s participation seriously we require good communication between children and personnel and between personnel and parents.

Play

Playing is a very important part of a child’s life in kindergarten. Playing has an intrinsic value and is a basic form of learning that children can express themselves through. Playing is pleasurable for the children, it gives them pleasure and is an activity they do voluntarily and which they choose to be a part of themselves. Playing is also “pretend” and it is a way for the child to prepare for adulthood. By pretending, the child enters its own imagination, takes on someone else’s perspective and gives life to thoughts and feelings.

Children playing together form the basis for friendship. To be allowed to take part in a game and make friends is crucial for a child’s happiness and ability to form opinions. Interacting with each other forms the basis of learning and social competence.

The kindergarten facilitates a varied form of playing through rooms, time and equipment which has been adapted to playing. The personnel are available to the children by supporting, inspiring and encouraging them to play. We find inspiration from common experiences and stories, as well as we observe and take hold of the children’s interests. This way the kindergarten makes sure that all the children gains pleasant experiences and an experience of mastering the interaction with other children. Children with a difficulty to enter a game, playing or in other ways will be followed up especially.

Learning

All the employees in the kindergarten are obligated to working after those decisions which lies within the law and the framework plan for kindergartens. The content of the kindergarten is built upon a comprehensive view of learning.
The learning takes place both within daily activities and in more organised situations. Because the children learn through different experiences, the personnel work based on an understanding that learning and teaching must be seen in context with care, playing and upbringing. This is a typical characteristic within the traditions of Norwegian kindergartens.

Disciplines/fields

The kindergarten is obligated to work with seven disciplines or fields throughout the year.
Communication, language and text
Body, movement, food and health
Art, culture and creativity
Nature, environment and technology
Ethics, religions and philosophy
Community and society
Number, room and form

All the employees work with all the fields and the educational supervisors has a special responsibility making sure that the work is being followed up. The work we do with these will be specified in the year plan and monthly plans.

My Kid (communication)

The kindergarten uses the communication platform MYKID. Here, a message can be sent between home and kindergarten. Here we post photos and information from the kindergarten and there is a calendar for activities. The parents get access when they are cared for and enter the necessary information about the child, permits and consents here.

Support role for parents

We wish to develop a close collaboration with the child’s home and an open dialog between the personnel and the parents. Our motto is “If we believe we can help, we will let you know.”

Most of the employees in the kindergarten have been working in a kindergarten for many years. We have built ourselves a solid knowledge about children. We wish to be active and offer our help when we see parents who struggle. We wish that parents can use our competence for help and guidance with challenges that also apply to the children when they are at home. A child’s reactions to everyday life are very much a result of what kind of interaction the child has with adult persons.

A relationship with the parents forms the child much more than any other relationship.
The kindergartens regulations contain some duties for the parents that are important to read through.

We wish parents will give us feedback both on what is good and what you wish could be done differently. You can do this during parent meetings, parent conversations or everyday through conversations with the personnel or by telephone/email with the daily manager.
We need parents represented in the Coordinating Committee (Samarbeidsutvalget) and on our board.

You can see which parents are represented in the kindergarten’s year plan. There is an election during the parent meeting in the autumn.

Dialog between the home and the kindergarten

Daily dialogs
Parent conversations - two times per year
Transition conversations -if the children move from a department to another and when they start school
Parent meetings -one to two times per year
Parent’s council and the Coordinating Committee (Samarbeidsutvalget/SU)
Arrangement due to holiday traditions, collective volunteering, coffee/soup gatherings, breakfasts etc.
User surveys
Contact if required

The Parent’s Council consists of the parents of all the children in the kindergarten.

Food arrangement

The kindergarten is using the supplier Barnehagematen. 5 days a week the children are being served hot food for lunch at 11.00 from this supplier. You can read about the food at www.barnehagematen.no.

At 14.30 the children have a second meal where there are sandwiches served.

The children are served fruit and milk every day. The parents are deducted extra charges for the food.

Barnehagematen takes any allergies and/or other food considerations in account. These are reported to the kindergarten at the start and continuously in case of any changes.

Each department has an allergy/food consideration list visible hanging on the department.

Safety

There is a fence all around the kindergarten and the gates are always closed. Only the adults are allowed to open the gate and parents only let their own children out of the kindergarten area.

Scarves and strings
There have been serious accidents in Norway where children have gotten stuck in jackets-, strings on a hat or scarves. We will therefore ask you that strings will be removed and that the children only use loose balaclavas around their necks instead of scarves. The children must not be wearing long necklaces of different kinds as decoration or for playing.
There is a professional company that have a yearly security check on the whole playing area outdoors.

The staffs have monthly check on indoors and outdoors areas.

The kindergarten got a plan of emergency and the staffs are trained in first aid.