As I type this, O is currently at preschool for the first time without me. A couple of weeks ago we were told that he had received a place at our 3rd choice school. All three of us went to visit the school twice to meet teachers and see the facilities (to be honest, my first impression was not so great, but I liked it better on the second visit), before making our decision. We decided to accept the place while staying on the wait lists for our top two choices as well as the English schools. (By accepting our #3 choice, we are automatically removed from the queues for the two bottom schools on our priority list.) It turns out, however, that we were actually very, very lucky in getting a place at this school because it is not only extremely close to us, with good facilities, but O's main teacher speaks excellent English and another teacher who is part of his group speaks Spanish as her first language. There is also a little girl whose father speaks English with her, and a little boy whose mother speaks Spanish with him, so O is not going to feel completely lost.
I'm feeling much more confident about the preschool decision after having spent the first three days there with him. It is the policy here (at least with the state schools) that a parent or guardian accompany the child for the entire day of school during the first three days. I sat with him in the song circle, stood nearby as he played with different toys, changed his diapers, helped with his food (but I was much more hands off than I usually am at home, and I realized that both S and I have been spoiling him WAY too much), was right next to him on the floor at nap time, etc. I was completely immersed in the preschool experience (so much so that other children were coming up to me for assistance or comfort!) and had the opportunity to see exactly how the day is structured.
I had been worried that preschools here might be lacking in structure. I know that the emphasis is on play, but I had wondered whether unstructured free play was all there was to it, with adults around just to make sure the children didn't hurt themselves. There is definitely a structure and routine to the way things are done, and I was quite impressed with what I saw (and am just going to trust that it wasn't something put on only for my benefit!). O is attending from 9 to 3 pm five days a week, which probably sounds like a lot, but in a way it seemed easier to make the adjustment right from the beginning instead of gradually easing him into a longer and longer day. There is free play either inside or outdoors in the morning, with a little snack of fruit. After the snack, the children play inside and choose what they want to play with, but the teacher might suggest painting or modelling clay or the sand box (most of the children do the suggested activity, but some of them do their own thing--guess where O falls) and while this wasn't done during the time I was there, they also work on "projects" some days. They might play with water and make observations about, for example, what happens if you put water in a funnel, or through a sieve. A recent project was imitating something they had read about in a book: a group of hippos built a diving board. The children spent time constructing different towers and diving boards out of foam blocks and having toy hippos jump off them.
Then they sit in a circle for singing (and probably usually stories, too--I think that might have been skipped for the benefit of me and O) before having scheduled diaper changing/potty time and hand washing for lunch. THEN, the children all sit down in little chairs around little tables and are given real cutlery, plates and glasses and, depending on the food, either serve themselves or wait to be served from communal dishes in the center of the table. The school has its own on-site chef who prepares organic food, and everyone is expected to eat the same thing (the teachers all eat with the children, and I did as well). The first day we had pasta with a sausage stew to go over it and side salads of beets and cabbage. Day 2 was tomato lentil soup (the children did not dish this out themselves) and bread. Day 3 was salmon with dill sauce, boiled potatoes, and fresh tomatoes and cucumbers on the side. My son ate NONE of it apart from the bread that came with the soup. But he really impressed me by being willing to eat the bread himself instead of having me tear it up into smaller pieces for him, and also by trying to drink out of his glass (he drinks from a straw at home). It was incredible seeing all these other two-year-olds using their knives and forks, drinking from glasses, eating very grown up food. Of course, the majority have been attending preschool since they were one and are used to this, but still. It made me realize how much I'd underestimated O, because I half expected him to throw a fit at the lunch table. His teacher assured me that it's common for kids not to eat anything at first, but they start to pay attention to all the other children around them and eventually try copying them. Right now it seems as though it would be a miracle if O picked up a fork and started eating salmon.
After eating, the children take their dishes over to a cart where they scrape leftover food into the garbage, stack plates and glasses, and drop their cutlery into a little container of soapy water. Until school, I don't think O had ever in his life cleaned up after a meal. Then it's nap time. Each child has a plastic box to store a pillow, blanket, stuffed animal and pacifier. (Pacifier use here has surprised me. In the US, we as parents are encouraged to get rid of the pacifier as soon as possible, but here the very same two-year-olds who appear so grown up are still extremely attached to their pacifiers and they don't seem to be dropped until kids are three if not older.) I expected that it would be difficult for O to fall asleep. Nothing was familiar (to make it more exciting and special, we let O pick out a new pillow, new blanket, and new animal specifically for school) and he'd never really slept outside of a crib or his stroller. On each of the three days, he was asleep within ten minutes and was the last one to wake up. Seriously, all of the other children were awake and playing and making lots of noise, and he was dead to the world. I had to wake him up myself on two of the days, and I wonder how he will adjust to the shorter nap. At home he is used to sleeping for 2-3 hours, but most of the kids at school only nap for an hour.
More free play after nap time (yesterday one of the teachers put on music and the kids were dancing and playing instruments, and O LOVED that), another potty/diaper break, then it's time for the afternoon snack. Poor O. Because he refused to try any of the lunch food, he absolutely inhaled the snacks in the afternoon and I fear he was taking much more than his fair share. I hope it will balance out and that he'll come around to trying the food at lunch. Then a little more playing after snack, then it's time to go.
Overall he did really, really well and seemed to like it, and I think he'll learn so much from school. Not book learning (the teacher specifically told me that they don't do that--things like numbers and counting come up in songs and stories, but they don't just practice numbers and letters), but learning how to interact with other people and learning to try new things that seem challenging but that I know he can do.
So, it's taken me quite a while to write all this and I still haven't received a call from the school, so I'm going to take that as a good sign. Do you know that he didn't even cry when I said good-bye to him this morning? Too excited about playing with the fun toys that we don't have at home. I hope he'll continue to be that excited about school!
