Pre-School

Went to another pre-school today, which took aaaages to get to. Well, half an hour on the tube. But still, it felt like aaaaages. It was a lovely little pre-school, everything about it was so cute. It felt nice that the teachers said they were inspired by the Reggio Emilia philosophy, and I knew what they were talking about. It's almost like... like I LEARNT something from Mrs P in Advanced Early Years at Canterbury. No, that can't be right... I learnt about Reggio Emilia while doing research for the essay I had to do for Early Years. For a second there, I thought that woman had taught us something. Her lessons were so clearly unprepared; she'd always just say "So erm... who did the reading? Let's talk about the reading..." and then she'd talk about the reading, for an hour and a half, then we'd have a break, and then... what else would happen? E, help me out here, what did we do in AEY? I remember the last lesson quite well, because that's when she gave us broad topics (like 'water') and told us to write other words associated with it, onto post-it notes. Not lesson plans, just general words. And then we had to stick those post-its onto another sheet of paper. That was the whole lesson. ANYWAY, the pre-school we went to today was nice, and I have included some pictures.

As an Englishman, it felt quite different to what I'm used to. Partly because I don't feel like everyone's looking at me thinking "What's a man doing here? He must be some sort of paedophile" (there were absolutely no qualms about me taking pictures, at all). And also, partly in terms of Health & Safety. On Tuesday, we had a seminar about the importance of toys in play, and the teacher brought in some of her son's old toys (he's 19 now), which included a Teenage Mutant Hero Turtle (not 'ninja turtle' - they were heroes when I watched them). There was also a painted bit a wood, with nails sticking out of it. Nailed into the wood, were bottle caps - as in spiky metal beer-bottle caps; I think it was meant as a musical instrument. The teacher reckoned he would have made it himself in pre-school. I thought that was mad, but everyone else was really surprised when I said that that sort of thing wouldn't be allowed in England, cos of Health & Safety rules. A bit of wood with nails sticking out of it! So anyway, I was still surprised when I went to this pre-school today, and the 4-year olds were happily sawing wood, and banging nails in with hammers. I'm not mad am I, that wouldn't be allowed in England would it? I can't imagine people being allowed to do that level of woodwork until secondary school.





Not particularly better than "pizza from £2.50" - I don't think the Swedes have quite got the hang of naming pizza places, and making them sound appetising - look at the man on the window! He doesn't make me think about eating pizza, he makes me think about pizza eating me!