History

Lahti English Kindergarten (LEK) was established in 1970, by the Finnish American Association to be a prominent early childhood education organization. Every year around seventy-five children learn English through schooling, playing, singing and doing arts and crafts. An association board for the LEK was founded in 1991 and LEK became independent from the Finnish American Association. As a non-profit organization, all profits are used to aid the Kindergarten through the purchasing of new materials; the funding of field trips and the providing cultural events. LEKs board purchased the current facilities in 2000. Since then LEK has provided complete child daycare and education.

Lahti English Kindergarten has developed its methods of teaching throughout its history. In the 1970s and 80s the Kindergarten used a combination of English and Finnish. Beginning in the early 1990s, LEK became one of the earliest schools to use early total language immersion. The early total language immersion method of teaching places the students in nearly a hundred percent educational experience in English. Early total language immersion has shown to not only provide an effective way of teaching another language to the child, but also strengthen the childs general ability to learn.