Pre-School

Big day tomorrow!  It's Isolde's first day at pre-school (förskolan)!  If the induction days count, which I think they do.  Otherwise, the real day is next Monday when she'll be there sans parents for the first time).

Induction is three days - Wednesday-Friday this week - and I will stay with her throughout the day 9:15-15:00.  Then on Monday I will drop her off at 9 and hopefully not hear anything before pick-up time.  The second week is technically induction too so she can only attend 9-15 (later she will have a bit longer hours) and I will be on stand-by if it's not working for some reason.  

This "three-day induction" is the method most pre-schools seem to be using nowadays instead of two or three weeks' induction where the child gradually spends more and more time at pre-school, such as 10 minutes the first day, 30 minutes the second day and so on.  While the "quick method" may not work for all children - and those children get more days - it's believed that three days is what is needed to adjust to a new environment and situation.  Especially if those three days are spent with a trusted parent who shares the first meeting with the teachers and the other children and is with them throughout all the activities and routines and shows them this is a fun and safe place to be.

I'm really excited about tomorrow!  Isolde is still rather oblivious even though we've been reading Kråkes förskola :)  She's a very social little girl so I think she's going to love it.  I also expect the induction will go well - fingers crossed - and if she has any difficulties it will come in a few weeks' or months' time when it's not new and exciting anymore.  Will keep you posted!

It was quite difficult to pick the pre-school and I hope this one will be right (although it's always possible to change of course).  Where we live in central Stockholm there are so many pre-schools and even if we tried to narrow the search we had around 25 pre-schools on the list to start with and had to get it down to five.  Five is the maximum number you can apply for through the central waiting list system in the municipality of Stockholm and those five have to be put in order of priority.  There's a really good comparison tool on the site to compare for example teacher-children ratio, number of teachers (trained, qualified) as opposed to other staff (non-qualified, without teaching degree), pedagogy and results from the parent questionnaire.  Most were however quite similar so in the end we very much ordered them on the basis of the parent questionnaire and especially key questions we thought mattered the most.  There are both municipal and private (independent) pre-schools in the central system, but many private ones have their own waiting lists so we also applied to many of those.  However, as both types are equally - and heavily (parents pay only 7-10% of the real cost in fees) - funded by the public purse, the City of Stockholm is planning to "force" the remaining pre-schools into the central system, albeit still allowing them to apply different admittance criteria, for example parent co-ops require parents to help out in different ways.

Our plan was to visit the five on our (central) list (there was no way we could visit 25 before narrowing it down) but I was recommended to wait until the spring before we wanted her to start.  By the way, the earliest you can apply through the central system is at 6 months while the private ones accept applications as soon as the baby has been born.  However, before we had got around to booking visits we were offered a place at our no 1 choice and we only had four days to reply.  So instead of visiting five pre-schools we just visited one.  Even though in an ideal world I would have wanted to be able to compare firsthand and I regret that we didn't visit all five pre-schools earlier in the process, it felt fine accepting the offer and I think it is the right choice (although since I haven't visited the others I can't know for sure...  I remind myself that in some parts of Sweden people just have one or very few choices and I guess I shouldn't complain). 

We were there for about an hour on the visit and visited both småbarnsavdelningen, Nallen (age 1-2 where Isolde will start) and the two older groups (age 3-4 and 5-6).  The pre-school is located in an early 20th century building and Nallen is on the first floor in premises that were in all likelihood a flat once upon a time (same for the other groups on the second floor, where they occupy the whole floor).  At first we were struck by how small it was, perhaps 60-70 sqm, but then we remembered that 14 little one-two-year-olds (and three staff) don't need that much space, especially since they spend most of the mornings outside and after 3pm the little ones usually join the older children upstairs.  The premises were a bit worn and torn (e.g. window sills and doorsteps could use a coat of fresh paint) but my friend the pre-school teacher (and my mum, also a pre-school teacher) had told us to look beyond such things (and in a way you can see it as fin-de-siècle charm) and focus on the staff and the teachers, the atmosphere (including how the children seemed to feel and behave) and the pedagogy and ways of teaching.  And we liked what we saw and felt.  They are not a pure Reggio Emilia pre-school but they are inspired by Reggio (as is the Swedish pre-school curriculum but to what degree varies from pre-school to pre-school).  They have a very small yard/outdoor play area, as many pre-schools located in the city (and some don't even have one at all), so instead they go to parks nearby (Humlegården, Tessinparken), other green areas (Gärdet, Djurgården) and the woods (Lill-Jansskogen) at least three or four days a week, rain or shine. 

But I'm sure I will have more to tell after tomorrow!

Meanwhile Peter started working yesterday after nine months parental leave and really had mixed feelings about it (as did I back in November when I returned to work after ten months leave) but is already back into the swing of project planning and meeting.  No soft start there.