Practice time at St. Georgs Bornehuset

All of us are having a two week practice time… some are helping in the class, some are observating, others are actually teaching, … We are doing some practice time at the St. Georgs Bornehuset, that is a kindergarten. Children from 3 tot 6 years old come here as a preparation for primary school. The children are divided in groups of +/-20 pupils. So the children are together in a group of different ages and it is nice to see that there is no gap between them because of the age difference.
The kindergarten starts it’s day at 6.30 AM and they finish at 5.00 PM. The parents of the children can bring of or collect their child whenever they like. In the kindergarten the day starts with playing, when the children are hungry the can take something out of their lunchboxes a have a quick snack, around 10.30 AM we go outside to play (at least if the weather Gods agree on that). Between 11.30 AM and 12.00 AM the children are having their lunch in the class. Four to six children sitting together with the teacher on a table. After lunch the children go outside (again) and play. At 2.00 PM they come in to eat a piece of fruit and then they stay inside until their parents come to go home.
This is what a normal day look’s like in the St. Georgs kindergarten. At first you would just think it’s children’s day care and for the youngest children it is a day care, where they can just play and enjoy their day. But in each class there is a ‘schoolgroup’ and that means that this group is being prepared for the school life in primary school. They do some exercises, activity’s were they learn the numbers, letters and important concepts…
They also have a ‘group –moment’ before lunch break, where they get and sit together in a group and were the ‘teacher’ talks about some subjects or things that the children find impotent. It’s really nice to see that each child get’s the chance to say something.

Our impression of the kindergarten is that is everything is very open-ended, they just go with atmosphere that is in the group, they do what they feel like doing and there are no rules. This experience is really nice and diverting for me. Certainly because we come from a country where rules and structure is very important in schools. It’s good to see that it can work in another way. But then the Danes also have another culture! We really admire the Danes of the way they are living their life.