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| This is a good point, I had no intention of chucking my son into full time education cold; preferring him to "dip his toes" into a day nursery first, but I disagree with the "experience of doing the Swiss way of things". Classroom environments are classroom environments pretty much everywhere and most operate on the "kids sit down and listen to teacher" method otherwise nothing would get done. It did when I went to my first day at school 106 years ago in the UK and doesn't seem to have changed much.
It is all down to how the teacher deals with getting 20-odd little ones under control while he or she gives them the next instruction. Then the noise can begin again - if I remember rightly...
Regarding the issue with your daughter learning German, isn't she being given some extra tuition? | |
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Apologies for sounding a bit grumpy about 'the Swiss way of doing things', I'd had a tough day.
I think it was the name "Kindergarten" that threw me - I have an image of a Kindy as a place like a nursery, where children simply play and make friends. But in fact, in Switzerland it is part of the school system. I suppose Swiss Kindergarten is a place where kids are brought up to speed and get the skills they need for the full-time school system where they learn to read and write etc.
I agree that in the UK my daughter would also have to behave properly in class, but she would find it easier because she would understand what the teacher was saying to her. She's finding it particularly difficult because she has so many new things to learn at once and I wanted to pass this on to fellow parents who might think it's better for their child to keep them at home full-time. With hindsight, I believe a year of Nursery would have helped our girl enormously with developing the skills she's expected to have and, very importantly, with learning German.
I had been assured by mums whose kids have been through the process that my daughter would quickly pick up German and would be "fine by Xmas". So I wasn't too worried. She's a friendly kid and makes friends easily. However, simply attending Waldspielgruppe with German-speaking kids hasn't given her enough grasp of the language to feel confident in school. She just plain doesn't understand what is being asked of her.
She is getting extra tuition at school in a small group of children whose mother tongue is not German, but because all these kids already speak the language, she's struggling there too. My suggestion that we get her private lessons to top this up has been politely but very definitely refused by the teachers who insist she will learn on her own.
Frankly, I feel I've let my girl down by not preparing her for this and I wanted to pass on my experience to parents of preschoolers who are debating whether to put their children into nursery. If I could turn the clock back a year, I would be chasing the local nursery to get my daughter a place.