Goals: The goals of the newly reformed national core curriculum of pre-primary education 2014 are broad based competence refers to the total of knowledge, skills, values, attitudes, capacity and will. The main point of pre-primary education is to have fun while learning and for the child to participate. One of the main goals of broad-based competence is to improve children's knowledge- and communication skills. Digital learning games are used as one way of practicing broad- based competence. In this study, it was examined, what kind of digital math learning games are used during pre-primary education and that do they correspond the pre-primary education curriculum of mathematical contents. To addition to this, it was also figures out what kind of experiences the teachers have of using digital education games in pre-primary education and how does the use of these digital games benefit the basic of pre-primary education curriculum and the goals of broad-based competence. Methods: The data of the research consist of digital math learning games, as well as of four interview given by pre-primary teacher. The data of the study was collected by theme interviews and the content of these interview were analysed by using theory guiding content analysis. For the research of learning games, I chose eight different mathematic digital games, which teachers had used in preschool groups in the spring of 2015. I analysed the digital learning games by using theory based content analysis. The results and conclusions: The use of digital learning games as teaching material supports the improvement of mathematical skills along with many other skills. According to teachers, digital games brought happiness and functionality to pre-primary education as well as good practice to children's developing social skills. Learning games supported children's self-esteem, when they got positive feedback of their learning experience. The digital learning games were seen as motivating and as a way to bring more chances to ability grouping and interaction. According to teachers, the challenges in using learning games were to chosen the proper game for the situation and to guarantee the quality of the game. By using the digital learning games, you can support the goals and curriculum of pre-primary education and board-based competence, in many ways.

For the students' future, it is important that today's teaching prepares them for their future challenges and gives them tools to solve those. There will be a need for creative thinking, courage and cooperation skills. The curriculum of Finnish schools has defined a broad range of skills which are important in the future of students. Teaching should be planned from the point of view of learning process and extending the boundaries of school subjects. In the context of integrating teaching, we talk about phenomenal learning, which is based on holistic phenomena of the real world. The basis of phenomenal learning is the principle of exploratory learning, where learning starts by exploring problems and finding answers and solutions to them. The focus of the thesis is a quasi-experimental study to explore which color shades are generated when using beetroot and peels of mandarin and red onion as a source of color, how those colors will withstand washing and light exposure and what kind of possibilities for exploratory, phenomenon based learning following the aims of transversal competences defined by the integrated curriculum the project provides. The main results of the experimental part of the study show that the use of rhubarb leaves as a mordant has darkened the color result with all the dyeing colors tried. This is explained by the fact that rhubarb causes a dark background color, which shows strong in light dyes with little redness. The colorfastness of beetroot towards light and washing is poor. The colors achieved by the use of mandarin peels are light yellow and red onion is a source for green or brown shades, depending on the mordant used. Those colors have a good fastness to light and laundering. The differences are found are a good starting point for phenomenon based exploratory learning. Performing dyeing and dyeing tests themselves touch many areas of expertise and educational goals. The use of bio waste as a source of colors, colors and woolen material offer a variety of opportunities for teaching following an integrated curriculum, exploratory learning, phenomenon based learning and improving transversal competences. The project can be expanded according to the teacher's goals, depending on the subject and topic, or following the pupils' interest. In this way learning can be expanded in various ways.

In this research I examined in what way the transversal competence areas included in the core curriculum are compatible with the education arranged by the activity areas. While the core curriculum is being renewed to suit the changing world, the role of the education arranged by the activity areas has remained the same for decades. There are, however, similarities between the transversal learning and the education arranged by the activity areas. They both aim at supporting comprehensive growth and development and neither of them functions inside the limits of separate subjects. The aim of transversal competence learning is the pupils´ growth as personalities and citizens in such a way that they recognize their own strengths while education arranged by the activity areas helps them to act independently in their lives. My material consisted of 22 interviews of teachers who taught by the activity areas. The interviews were collected during the spring of 2018 in four cities in different parts of Finland. I analysed the material utilizing analysis based on thematic networks. I executed my study as a qualitative research. The results showed that it is possible to make use of the ideas of transversal competence learning in a versatile way in education arranged by the activity areas. Multiliteracy, ICT competence, working life competence and entrepreneurship were emphasized in the material because in these areas of learning there seemed to be an obvious contradiction as to their suitability to education by the activity areas. In the light of the definition of the core curriculum and the results of research, these three areas of learning can be made use of in education arranged by the activity areas. Documenting the suitable methods in the core curriculum would be important as well as teachers´ further education. I noticed that teachers experienced the contents of transversal competence learning and learning by activity areas being alike. In teachers´ opinion taking care of oneself, managing daily life, interaction and expressing oneself are the most important areas of transversal learning. Teachers also presented integration and inclusion solutions they used in transversal education. In addition to this they talked about participation and its realization in the framework of transversal. competence. They also expressed doubts as to the possibilities of transversal competences and their appropriability.

Recent studies show that motivation, emotion, and interest are engaged in learning. Engagement to learning is a complex entity in which the dynamic interaction between the student and the learning environment is central. In addition, students` ability to influence their own learning, mutual cooperation, and meaningful experience in learning strengthens engagement in learning. Recent curriculum on behalf of transversal competence underlines central meaning of these factors in teaching. This is also topical, as the learning outcomes and motivation of children and young people have fallen in recent years. The purpose of this thesis is to study the factors involved engagement in comprehensive school setting during science learning project on 5.–6. grades. The data (n = 74) was collected in spring 2018 from a local school in a metropolitan area during the phenom-enal science learning process in classes 5–6, which was carried out according to inquiry-based learning. The Experience Sampling Form was developed for this thesis in order to study the students' internal experiences during the learning process. Students responded to the questionnaire six times during the five-week working pe-riod, and field notes were also used during analysis of the thesis. Experience Sampling data was used to gener-ate sum variables (motivation, academic emotions, and interest factors), the interconnection was examined by the Spearmans` rank correlation coefficient. On the second phase, the link between the variables and the stages of work (inquiry based learning) was examined by the Kruskall Wallis test and the paired Mann-Whitney U test. The connection between variables and working methods (researching team, whole class) were examined with Cross-Tabulation Analysis, also observations from field notes were produced and compared with the work stages (teacher guidance, information retrieval, evaluation). The formed variables´ correlation is statistically significant to a large extent with each other, so it is justified to investigate these synergies. On the other hand there were no statistically significant differences between work phases and variables, exception was apathy variable, which had statistically significant difference be-tween question making and evaluation. In terms of working habits, students' experiences (somewhat, much) were evenly distributed with activity, insertion and ability variables. Apathy was less experienced and student experienced both ways of working mainly rewarding. Experience of import was less experienced during the en-tire class work and student had less autonomy experience during both working methods. According to findings, interaction and concentration were the most abundant during the work of the research team. The results of this thesis confirm that learning is not about individual factors, but about the complex process of the student and the learning environment. In addition, the students' ability to actively influence their own work and the students’ mutual work reinforce engagement in learning. In summary, it can also be said that phe-nomenal learning according to inquiry-based learning strengthens students' autonomy, interaction and engage-ment to learning. This is significant, because the current curriculum in particular challenges the implementation of teaching to be more cooperative. However, more information about learning is still needed. The purpose of this thesis could be applied more widely in the field of education research so that the engagement in learning could be explored longer term and in among several classes.