Preschool Orientation

They take things seriously here - a meeting was scheduled for parents the Saturday before school started and on the Sunday the students were required to come for a "get to know you" session and assessment of their skills. Luckily for me, Wang Nan came to the meeting to translate for me - it was a long talk about how our children were going to be going off to school and not to worry as they'd be taken very good care of, to be aware of how they will be feeling, instructions not to tell the children how much they'd be missed, information that 90% of children cry on their first day and this is to be expected, a run down of what their day will entail and what they would be expected to learn the first semester (colours, holding a spoon and a pen, writing their name - presumably in chinese, simple chinese character strokes) and information about how to catch the bus and to make sure we weren't late dropping them off or picking them up. What a whirlwind of information.

We were also provided with a list of things to bring with us the next day when Alex was to attend the school: a ball, a book and a toy. We found out the next day that these would be staying in the classroom for the year. OK. Alex warmed up slowly to the classroom, it was hard for her to answer the teachers as they were speaking almost all chinese to her. Hard for her to demonstrate her abilities when she had them in english but not in chinese - but I guess that will come. But in the end she was won over by the play area - with a shopping cart, doll bed and other exciting items that were similar enough to her american preschool to be welcome. Sebastien also really enjoyed crawling around the playgrounds and playing with Alex's slippers.In fact, it was difficult to extract her from her classroom to go home! But we did so with promises that she would be back the very next day!

And here's a video of them both enjoying the playground.