Early childhood education (ECEC) centers and groups of children
The Kindergarten Museum is a great destination for daycares. The museum design encourages visitors to be active. The museum considers child audiences. You can play here! In addition, from the Kindergarten Museum, you can borrow the You and Froebel construction kit or rent an entire Froebel box for your own ECEC center! The Time Travel operating model opens up new opportunities for working between generations.
Currently, the Kindergarten Museum offers In the museum with Teddy guided tour to children under 3-years-old. For children over 3-years-old, the museum offers Kindergarten life and Museum Mouse’s toy day guided tours, as well as a Building workshop and the Kindergarten life three-times visiting package. Christmas at kindergarten, a guided tour organized at the end of the year, is planned for each visiting child group based on the age distribution of a group. Read more about the child group tours on the Guided Tours page.
The Kindergarten Museum's material package for early childhood education gives tips to process the museum visit with the group before and after the museum visit. The package is aimed at ECEC center groups visiting the Kindergarten Museum. Participating in guided tour do not require the use of the material package, but we recommend it so that children's learning experience deepens and things experienced in the museum are better remembered. Ideas in the material package can also be applied to visits to other museums and in connection with excursions. You can open the working material by clicking here (the material is in Finnish): Kindergarten Museum's material package.
You can find out more about the Kindergarten Museum at the Early Childhood Education Fair held during Autumn in Helsinki. We participate in the fair each year with changing themes.
Contact
Call 050 3077 399 / Curator of education Fredrika VisuriSend an email to ebeneser(at)ebeneser.fi
"8 children and 3 child-minders from Espoo are visiting 3rd time. A wonderful museum! Children are enjoying!"
"A great place, fun to play, wonderful guided tour!"
"Thank you with a big child-sized hug! This is a wonderful place!"
Taken from the guestbook of the Kindergarten Museum
The Kindergarten Museum at a ECEC center:
Froebel box – rental construction play set
Froebel box is a rental construction and creative learning set aimed mainly at ECEC centers. The box contains original Froebel blocks as well as Giant-sized blocks and "You and Froebel" construction kit that are designed in collaboration with artist Alexander Reichstein and the Kindergarten Museum.
The Froebel box enables comprehensive work projects through different materials. Play, creativity and learning join naturally. The rental set can be used in the pedagogy of the entire ECEC center. The renting ECEC center can use the box to create joint projects, in which all children and adults can participate.
The box can be rented for four weeks at a time or by agreement. Rental price for a four-week period is 300 euros. It includes an introduction to the use of the box through a demo workshop aimed at adults, as well as transportation costs of the set to a nearby area from the Kindergarten Museum.
Read more about the Froebel box from here.
"You and Froebel" construction kit
There is three available "You and Froebel" constuction kits for ECEC centers to borrow from the Kindergarten Museum. Kits are part of the Froebelian innovations designed by artist Alexander Reichstein for the Kindergarten Museum.
The kits contain reused toy parts that will combine with wooden shapes containing magnets. Children can attach toy parts to these basic wooden shapes with magnets. At the same time, recycling and ecology are part of the play: the toy parts of broken toys form new characters and worlds, whole new stories!
Play with the building materials can be combined with reading, drawing, storytelling, music, word art, photography and other documentation methods.
One can supplement to construction kit with toy parts brought by children. Play changes and develops over time, as the toys gradually change, and place changes as the construction kit travels from a one ECEC center to another. The loan period for one kit is two weeks.
Time Travel - operating model
The Time travel (Aikamatkalla in Finnish) operating model is an innovation of the Time travel project under the Ebeneser Foundation. As a result of the project, ECEC center workers got tools to strengthen family engagement and a sense of community regarding child group work and joint family events. Intergenerational interaction will strengthen by also inviting grandparents to participate in the activities.
The Time travel project was part of the Emma&Elias program coordinated by the National Child Welfare Association and funded by the Social and Health Organization Assistance Center (STEA). The main goal was to increase the social well-being of children through working models that strengthen a sense of roots and identity.
You can familiarize yourself with the Time travel operating model on the website of the Time travel project. The website has a lot of material, although mainly in Finnish, that one can use working with child groups, especially with activities that connect different generations. In the Kindergarten Museum shop, you can find the book Aikamatkalla perheiden kanssa (available in Finnish), which introduces the operating model with concrete tips.