Hello dear Hiveians... I hope everything is great wherever you are.
Today I want to write about my little princess who finally reached the age to leave kindergarten and starts school.
The local tradition at the welcoming ceremony for the 1st class kids is that the children would bring their pretty „Schultüte“ filled with little presents and sweets. Everyone can show off their parent‘s effort 😁.
It‘s in fact a very good business for craft-artists. Many parents would not mind paying high for a custom-made „Schultüte“.
I chose to make it by my self and even have enough material left to make a little pretty skirt circular skirt for her to wear at the historical day.
Below is my daughter‘s „Schultüte“, made with love by Mummy <3:
And this one is the skirt made with the same material:
The following pictures are taken during the welcoming ceremony.
Sorry for not posting more pictures of the ceremony cos there are too many little kids there and I don‘t feel good to expose their face without their consent, especially since it‘s not a public event but a closed group one :).
With daddy and grandpa...
From the first few days observation my daughter seems to be excited. It makes sense though, cos it‘s something new for her afterall and she get all new stuffs, presents, new friends, new experience and so on.
Neverthless I can‘t help feeling worried about the following weeks after the children finally start getting their lesson.
My daughter has a strong character and she is rather precocious.
It's not easy to convince her to do something she is not interested to or she think it's useless/unnecessary, or she has her own idea/plan.
Well...part of it is actually thanks to our way of raising her. I have always allow her to think and make a decision over things related to her as far as it's still feasible and acceptable. I never really give any strict prohibition, but always try to offer some options, give some limit and explain the consequences of each option.
We always told the truth for her every questions, never try to obscure any facts because it's taboo topic, too advanced, too sensitive or such.
We thought that it doesn't matter how much she can understand now, but it's more important that she doesn't have the wrong information to start with, because her brain would still record them.
In the future it will be easier for her to understand the things she hasn't comprehend much today, if she didn't get confused by the wrong/misleading information previously.
But well...it might probably make it difficult for her in school 😔.
Below is the assesment the nursery teacher gave me when we had the last parent-teacher meeting before she left the kindergarten for good.
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This is the rough translation for the assesment:
- Jana is ready to face new challenge & would put some effort to do the tasks given, if she is interested in it and has the mood to do it. She got easily distracted and can‘t stay still.
She could follow instruction well, however she often solve the problems using her own methods and argued that she wants to do it her own way. She can‘t always understand why she has to follow orders when she has her own ideas that lead to a good solution as well.
She is not scared of an unfamiliar environment, new friends or caregivers and would easily adjust to them. Neverthless she always wants a thorough explanation for any changes / new circumstances and it would often take a long discussion to make her convinced. - Jana has confidence in her learning ability. When she finished a task through following her own ideas, she wouldn‘t feel insecure even if everybody else did it differently and got another results. She would always have a good argument why she did it another way.
She can in fact work on a task in focused manner, however it wouldn‘t be an easy time later at school where she normally needs to follow teacher‘s instruction, although she is cognitively capable of doing so.
It‘s not easy for her to put her needs aside, however she tends to have bigger tolerance for her friends.
Jana solves conflicts verbally. She can find arguments to convince others, on the other hand she would require a good arguments from the other party as well to make her agree for a compromise.
Her large vocabulary is surely a good support in the discussion. She can read, can do calculation tasks and has quite big knowledge of things that interests her.
From the assessment above you'd understand why I have some worries about how she would cope with the school in the long run. This week she hasn't got much from the school, so she still hasn't met any issues. It seems like they still trying to make the children accustomed to the new environment and especially cos we have few children who don't even speak german (refugees from Ukraine). This would certainly make the pace of the lesson even slower.
I can imagine that my daughter will get bored soon enough, cos she already mastered most of the things the first grader have to learn, except „French“.
Yes, the kids in her school has French lesson instead of English.
She can read in 3 languages (german, indonesian and english) fluently, can write rather well (with occasional mistake, like: missing one consonant, mixing up „F“ and „V“, or „S“ and „ß“ which is basically negligible for her age), and she can even do math calculation with variables, column addition/substraction and simple multiplication.
Neverthless, I don‘t really think that jumping classes too far would be the best solution.
First, she is not advanced in every single subjects afterall. There are certainly things she still need to learn from the start with children her age.
Second, she would have to mingle with children older than her and learn the same thing with them. There is a risk that those children might even exclude her.
Not everyone would just admire others for being smart, but there are more who would probably dislike to be outsmarted by a person far younger than them.
Third, she might be rather precocious, but she is still 6 year old anyway. She still loves to play with things her peers normally enjoys.
The older children would not necessarily be happy playing with little sprout like her, and she might not necessarily enjoy time with them either.
Unfortunately homeschooling is prohibited in Germany.
I'm not against "compulsory education", what I disagree is "compulsory school attendance".
Compulsory education is important to prevent irresponsible and extremely conservative parent blocking access to education for their children based on gender for example.
But children are all individuals with their own personal traits, talents, skills and interest. They can only reach their maximum performance and would accomplish more, if they're given the possibility to develop and explore their personal talent in their own pace using methods and in the environment/circumstance they're most comfortable with.
I don't buy the excuse of "lacking social exposure" to go against "homeschooling", because school is not the only place to get social exposure or to train the team working ability.
There are many ways to socialize for children. You can still enroll your kids into any talent clubs, sport clubs, etc to give them opportunities to make friends and to nurture another talents aside of academic competence.
Anyway if the government is concerned with the psychological issues of the children doing homeschooling or the quality of the private education, isn't the solution rather simple?
The education board can even arrange an assessment schedule for the kids every semester carried out by a professional children psychologist to make sure that the children are doing well learning at home and it's not forced by the parent.
Homeschooled children would also do exams to test their knowledge, so where is the problem?
Surely not every parent are capable or those who are cognitively capable might not have the time and patience to do it, but those who can...why are they not allowed to do so?!
This is something that I just can't get it.
German doesn't have enough teacher anyway these days... so isn't homeschooling fit to be one of the solution?
But yeah... expecting German to be more flexible.... I don't know if it would ever happen :-D.
This is also one of a reason why migration comes into consideration.
We just needs more flexibility 😊.
It's also not sure if we would definitely do homeschooling later on, but we want to have the options to do so, if our daughter feels more comfortable with it in the long run.
Whether we can do it or not, I guess it's rather obvious from everything she managed to learn up to now.
Anyway...enough with my ramblings today, we'll just see how things develop later. I hope our little girl would still enjoy her time at school here, it's not bad to have more experience no matter how good or bad it is.
One can always learn from it :).
Thanks for visiting my blog and for your upvotes...
See you soon in my next post...
And so it begins...the world finally intrudes on the lovely universe you have fashioned for your child. So much of what you describe about school is irrational. The teacher's concern that your daughter solves problems in her own way
The teacher should be delighted that your child offers original solutions--this is the essence of creativity, the essence of human ingenuity. Unfortunately, school is not so much about encouraging as it is about training children to 'fit in'.
I went through this as a child and found school so very boring until I reached high school and could begin to assert myself. I tried to spare my children this regimentation but wasn't very successful as I changed schools several times.
In a way it's good for your daughter to run into opposition. This will be as much a part of her life as anything else. With your help she will learn to cope with the rigidity without bending, she will learn to accommodate a not entirely obliging environment. You will support her at home and reinforce her great qualities. Though you are probably right to plan on placing her eventually in a more encouraging, productive environment.
I wish you well with this challenge. Watching our children's battles/struggles is so much harder than going through them ourselves.
BTW: The Schultüte and skirt are precious. They remind me of the lovely treasures my mother would sew for me when I was a child.
There you pointed out the core issues! You hit the nail in the head.
Their most concern is to train children to fit in...putting children in the same mold and squezee them until they made the "right" form.
Schools killed creativity of children and their passion towards learning this way.
When I listened to the kindergarten teacher during the meeting session, I actually didn't have any concern to hear all the "flaws", because I didn't take them as "flaws" at all.
I had another worry...
She might be different from the mainstream and would probably give the teacher a hard time (which also means the same thing for her actually), but that didn't make her a bad seedling.
She might be mistaken as a disobedient and a difficult pupil, but not a bad seedling.
She could get me on my nerves too sometimes LOL, and it could be overwhelming to have much discussion with her and to try finding proper answer to all her questions, but isn't it what's supposed to be our job as educator anyway?
We shouldn't kill children's curiousity.
And I do understand how difficult it is to provide a character's adjusted education in a school, that's why I think homeschooling or something like montessori concept could be offered as a solution.
Unfortunately, montessori was not our option cos it's just too far away from us. And homeschooling is not an option either in Germany.
Austria would have been an option for us, of only the life there is not as expensive as in Germany LOL.
If we want to move out and give up the well paid job prior the retirement age,
then we need to find the place which is not too expensive 😜.
Thank you :). She appreciates it so much too :-D. Have a nice day...
Both my children attended Montessori for 2 years of nursery, and kindergarten! They loved it and it did help them to grow as independent, intelligent individuals.
Good luck on the road ahead.♥️ Above all, stay positive with your daughter and try to give her a positive attitude toward school and teachers even though you are dismayed. Enjoy these years ahead. It all goes by so very quickly.
What a nice "Schultüte". Very impressive work! 🙂 👍
I'll keep my fingers crossed for the little kobold and hope that she won't have a hard time in school. I'm very sure that you raised her right and that she will be able to keep up. It's good to read that she is already so advanced in many topics. 👍 I'm rooting for her.
That's true. If things run smoothly, she might not stay long anyway LOL.
But at least she finally end up having a small class (18 children). Previously it was not clear whether they will open 3 or 2 classes, but now I'm glad that the result is 3 classes.
This way the teacher won't be too overwhelmed :-D.
I'm not fundamentally against school attendance... if the child feels good with it, that's fine. What I'm yearning for is the flexibility, the open options to choose.
The reason why I'm most concerned about her is not only the fact that she has already learned too much... but it's more of her personality.
She inherited nearly all the quirks of her daddy (you must know what I means LOL).
Can you imagine the scene while I'm nagging at her because she has done a mischief again, and then suddenly she interrupted me with this:
"Mummy, that's not correct. You should have said it this way!"
I'm speechless 🙃. If I replied:"Egal...du weißt, was ich meinte.."
Then she answered:"Nein, Mama...das ist nicht egal. Falsch ist falsch. Du must richtig sprechen."
Heeeey... I don't need German lesson now, kid! 😩.
So..you see why I'm worried, right?!
Can you imagine her acting like that in school hahahahaha.
Another issues is that she tend to sleep late and wake up late too.
She is not an early bird by nature. Since she was a baby, I never got dragged from bed by her in the morning, it's really heaven hahaha.
Many mommies of her friends are envious of me, if I told them that I can always sleep in 😂.
But now it's a hardwork for me to wake her up on time for school.
At least the school is rather near, only takes 15 minutes on foot, so I always wake her up as late as possible and prepare everything at night. This way she only needs to wash up fast, brush her teeth, get dressed and go :-D.
Breakfast at schoolbreak.
Haha, I can imagine that she is quite the nitpicker. 😉 But isn't it nice to see that you can already learn a lot from your own daughter? 😁
Haha, especially I hope she won't need to stay a long time there, before we finally leave Germany. :)
Hier werden direkt Erinnerungen wach. Da wir als ganze Gruppe aus dem Kindergarten auf die Schulbank wechselten, gab es nur wenige unbekannte Gesichter im neuen Gebäude.
Wie dem auch sei – spannend war es allemal.
Ich bin zwar auch der Meinung, dass das bestehende Schulsystem dringend einer Veränderung bedarf, doch stehe ich der Möglichkeit, dass das heimische Wohnzimmer den Klassensaal ersetzt, sehr skeptisch gegenüber.
Ich hatte das zweifelhafte Vergnügen, eine Familie kennenzulernen, die ihre 5 Kinder selbst unterrichteten. (In Österreich ist dies durchaus möglich.) Nach spätestens zwei Tagen hat mich der Umgang mit diesen Kindern gelangweilt, da ich mich nicht mit Kindern, sondern "Halb-Erwachsenen" unterhielt. Die waren imstande, mir Details aus der griechischen Mythologie wie ein Teppich vor den Füßen auszurollen, hatten allerdings nicht einen einzigen Witz auf Lager.
It brings back memories. We moved from kindergarten to school as a whole group. So there were only a few unfamiliar faces in the new building.
Be that as it may, it has always been an exciting time.
I agree that the existing school system is in urgent need of change. But I am very sceptical about the possibility of the living room at home replacing the classroom.
I had the dubious pleasure of meeting a family who taught their 5 children themselves. (This is possible in Austria.) After two days at the latest I was bored with these children, because I was not talking to children but "half adults". They could roll out details of Greek mythology like a carpet in front of my feet, but they didn't have a single joke.
Good luck to your little princess and I hope she enjoys her time at school as well.... She is very clever and was well prepared from her mom and her dad. I believe that she can adjust herself well with the new environment! ;)
Thank you @tangmo . I hope so. Finger crossed :).
You're welcome! ;)
She is just going to do fine in a new environment, she has the courage to face the new challenge at her new school.many will be timid being the first day in their new school, wishing her the best.
She is not a timid girl.. rather bold and too confident instead and could be very stubborn as well. so her being flustered is not what I'm worrying of 😁.. but well, we'll just see how it goes in the long run. We're planning to migrate soon anyway, so I'm not gonna make so much issues out of these here. We'll just find out a better option for here at the new place later on :).
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