Preschools in Scandinavia are different from those in the US since they generally offer full-time or part-time care all year-round for children who are as young as one year old. The model is sometimes called “educare,” because the purpose of the preschools here is to simultaneously educate and care for children whose parents work outside the home. Since that is most parents, a vast majority of Scandinavian children (as many as 84 percent in Sweden) between the ages of one and five are enrolled in preschool.
