International Day Nursery Turku

Have a happy weekend 😊

Happy Halloween Turku! What a fabulously spooky day we've had. In the morning we were greeted by Mr. Jack O'lantern and had to make our way through sticky spider webs to get inside. The we did some witchy yoga and silly pumpkin dancing. Before lunch we even did some sensory play with "zombie brains", "pumpkin guts" and "ghost slime". What a great day it has been so far and there's still more to come! We hope that your Halloween is as spooktacular as ours!!

Family system crisis as a result of moving to the other country

Moving from one country to another, is a complex and multifaceted psychosocial process with significant and long-lasting effects on a human's personality and identity and on the moving to the other country family in overall total. Dynamic shifts and changes resulting from a mixture of “cultural shock” and mourning over the losses inherent in resettlement are gradually giving way to structural changes in human’s mind and the emergence of so-called “hybrid identity”.

Farewell to one country implies great opportunities and simultaneously great losses for all the family members. Often people have to give up familiar food, national music, undoubted social customs and even their own language.

The new country offers food that tastes as if strange, new melodies, different political opinions, unfamiliar language, dull holidays (not still endowed with personal meaning), unfamiliar historical and cultural characters and visually unusual landscapes. However, along with various losses, there is a renewed opportunity for psychological, personal growth and positive changes in family system. The new channels of self-expression and of building up social connections are becoming available. The new models for self-identification, new expectations for oneselves and the others, the new ways of behaviour appear gradually. And this is a huge resource for those who changes the place of living in a huge scale.

One thing about resettlement is understandable: the result of immigration is an abrupt change from an “average expected environment” to an environment and circumstances that are strange and unpredictable. And it takes a considerable amount of time to adapt to the new sociocultural environment and feel at ease. According the profound investigation conducted by Salman Akhtar, an Indian-American psychoanalyst, the duration of the adaptation process is the age of the immigrant (at the time of resettlement), divided by 4. So if the person moved to the other country when his|her age was 28 – relatively the period of sociocultural adjustment will last about 7 years. We can easily calculate, that the length of corresponding period in case with little children is way more short. Partly that means that children as if help their parents during this adaptation to the living in the new country.

The anxiety and fears accompanying cultural shock challenge the stability of the “newcomer's” mental organization. Another threat to emotional stability is posed by the process of grieving over the losses inherent in resettlement. The coexistence and interaction of culture shock and the process of nostalgia causes a serious shake-up of identity. This state of constant mental changes is alike the "process of rebirth of personality" in adolescence. Parafrasing it, adults as if turn into adolescents, who feel unsecure, suppressed, dependent, depressed and doubting their own self-worth. In this case it’s important for the family members to be conscious about Scylla and Charybdis of the moving to the other country in order to take care of the family social and psychological well-being.

The transformation of the immigrant's self-identity can be called the third birth of the personality, after early childhood and adolescence, respectively. Thus, mastering a new, unfamiliar language is an important part in shaping a new identity and activity, which might reunite all the family members in order to continue happy and emotionally healthy life together.

Written by Valeriya Paramonova

Volunteer at Turun Kriisikeskus and Sateenkaari Koto ry, Turku

Multilingualism of our kids

When thinking about the present and future of our kids it’s important to keep in mind this kind of constants as safety, friendly humane atmosphere, priceless social connection, opportunity for our kids to develop and perform themselves in life in those unique way, which they choose for themselves. And all of those are being connected with the language\languages which the child and their parents speak.

Moving to the other country on the studying, working or family ties grounds might raise up a lot of questions within the parents. One of the essential questions, puzzling and evoking a lot of worries, is – what language to choose for the primary education of the children. And before answering it it’s important to understand, that the situation of moving to another lingual surrounding, besides being enormously stressful, gives a lot of the growth opportunities to all the family members. And choosing the international English language for the start of the kid’s studying route might be the most safe and mild step to adjust to the changing surroundings and to boost the multilingual development of a little one.

Multilinguals are people who can freely use the other language, which is not their mother tongue, to solve important tasks in their lives. There are many patterns of bilingualism and multilingualism. But what is in common among those is that according to neuropsychological research multilingualism is a pattern of mental flexibility.

Mental flexibility of a person means:


1. Tolerance towards different languages and openness to different cultures develops, accepting the differences of the others grow and the person’s horizons broaden.
2. Flexibility of perception of reality. Due to the fact that multilinguals have to switch from one lingual structure to another, they quickly grasp the essential details.
3. Fast adequate response to the changes within extreme life events and critical situations.
4. Self-control develops in any activity, especially in the academic educational process.
5. Analytical skills develop drastically.
6. Multitasking ability grows.
7. Creativity and the ability to use the same object or concept in different creative ways are being developed.

So, as you can see, giving your child the opportunity to dive into the lingual bath of several languages supports positively your child’s development and gives him mental tools, which will be useful for them all their life long.
Choosing the primary education for your child within the international English language surroundings helps healthy integration and adaptation to the other cultural surroundings, when family's own cultural and national identity, family members’ self-respect, connection with their roots are preserved, but new elements are also accepted and integrated. In other words, the ability to accept both, oneself and the others, humanity and feeling of safety grows and becomes more solid.

Written by Valeriya Paramonova
Volunteer at Turun Kriisikeskus and Sareenkaari Koro ry, Turku

In celebration of the Mid-Autumn Festival, also known as Moon Festival, we made our version of the colorful festival lanterns.

We love the season of Autumn, with all its beautiful colours 😍 We have been doing fun child friendly art work. We used apples to print and leaves rubbings from the leaves we picked up on our walk.

Today we all went on a 2km nature walk in the forest. We climbed over roots and fallen trees. We ran up and down hills. We looked at all the colours that Autumn gives us and found a snail. Many studies have shown that children who spend time in nature enjoy better mental, emotional and physical health. 🥰

Our Ninja warrior obstacle course is ready for our strong, fast and agile little ninjas 😍💪

We took advantage of the weather today to create some art that reflected the mood. Wax crayon drawings under water color paint was the perfect way to depict the storm brewing outside.⛈️
Tomorrow is adventure day, stay tuned for our version of Ninja Warrior!