Short stay of pupils in Finland

Erasmus guests at Gesterby school, Kirkkonummi

In the beginning of January about 50 guests from all around Europe arrived 

to Gesterby school due to an Erasmus project. Among the guests there were 

35 pupils and 13 teachers. The international week started festively with a ceremony 

in the gym hall. The whole school participated and the guests were welcomed by 

music played with the kantele, a traditional Finnish instrument. 

The headmistress also gave a speech and pupils played the Finlandia hymn 

with the violin, the cello and the piano.  

The first day at Gesterby school continued with a variety of workshops, 

including robotics, VR glasses and learning how to play the kantele. 

The whole first floor of the school building was dedicated to these workshops 

so this whole module of the school was filled with the kantele players, coders 

programming lego robots and individuals who were seeing the world through 

the VR glasses.

The LO-VE project encourages the use nature as a learning environment, 

prevents an unphysical way of life of the pupils and enhances the positive use of 

technology at school. Therefore, the programme that the guests participated during 

the week included a visit to Haltia – The Finnish nature Centre, hiking in Linlo 

and a culture filled day in Helsinki. The visit to a reindeer park in Espoo and 

a campfire coffee experience in a Finnish forest hut called kota were the highlights 

of the trip for many of the pupils. 

In addition, during the week both the guest pupils and teachers were introduced 

to the Finnish school system in general, the language bath scheme at Gesterby school

 and open learning environments that are very much present at Gesterby school.

The international week was finished on Friday the 17th January with a farewell 

ceremony held in the gym hall. Later that evening the host families, guest and 

other project participants gathered to the school to a farewell dinner. 

Our LO-VE project is an international Erasmus+ project (2019-2021).

Except Finnish school, there are 5 other schools involved in the project coming 

from Spain, Portugal, Croatia, Czech and Slovakia. Within its sphere of influence,

 there are in total of 1650 pupils aged 6-15 and their families, and around 100 teachers.