Kindy! (Don't worry- it's NOT Montessori)

Easter Egg Hunt at Gaastra's

Easter Egg Hunt at the Gaastra's

 Our family broke a long-standing tradition and did NOT decorate easter eggs….  None of the stores sell the handy Easter Egg dye, for one thing. I ran into an acquaintance at the grocery store who suggested coloring chocolate eggs with icing.  When I said that I meant dyeing REAL eggs, she helpfully mentioned that she had some black dye at home, and that black dye might actually show up on brown eggs, but wouldn't that be somewhat macabre?  (I wish I could write her delightful accent into this story…I almost laughed out loud).  It's true….they only sell BROWN eggs here.

All the people at our house on Saturday night - farewell party for Jess Dedrickson.  She finished her year as au pair and going home to Mapleton, UT.

Easter is the only time of the year when we buy sugary cold cereal!  

Joycie first day of Kindy

Turning 3 means that Joycie can start Kindy (Kindergarten).  Like Germany, New Zealand pays for every child to to have up to 20 hours of kindergarten and "relief care" per week.   Joycie is going to be attending a delightful Kindy that is adjacent to Mercy and Sage's primary school.  She'll go for about 2 hours a day, 4 days per week.  She is very excited!!!  

Kindergarten teachers here are trained to be non-directional, meaning that they don't "direct" the children, but rather, they act as role models for children and provide them opportunities to "enlarge" their play and their vocabularies.  I observed for an hour on Tuesday, and saw the 5 teachers each standing in their designated section of the Kindy, asking kids gentle questions about their play and helping kids accomplish tasks and projects that the kids had initiated. 

For example, there is a big section of the Kindy, with all sorts of craft supplies in bins that are easily-accesible to little 3- and 4- year olds.  But these kids will never make crafts all in a line, all using the same basic cutting or painting strategy, and they will never produce the mostly-identical art projects that used to line the walls of our last elementary school.  I saw 2 or 3 kids working in this section of the Kindy, each creating an entirely unique piece of art, with teacher, every once in a while, asking them questions like, "What do you think would be the best way to dry the paint?" or "I see you've used brown around the edges, did you know that is called a "border"?" or "I see you are interested in using these fabric scraps.  What ideas do you have?"

Me: "is this similar to the Montessori approach?"  

Teacher (aghast):    Oh no, we would never want to be so structured!

No worksheets.  No alphabet.  No story time.  No calendar or counting.  Just very stimulating indoor and outdoor areas and about 6-1 teacher-to-student ratio.  

Birthday cake for Joycie and Mike, celebrating their tradition of going to parks together.