After a lot of searching around my house we were frustrated to find no good play schools that met our expectations, most of them were apartments converted to play schools, one of the ladies when I asked her what her motive of starting a school was answered saying "I loooooveeeee kids", ummm so do I!. Some of them showed me massive bundles of papers where several exercises involving writing 1,2,3's and A,B,C's were printed and I was told that, if she(my daughter) cleared these exercises, she would be ready to start school in Standard 1 (grade 1). I got petrified seeing these schools and decided that they were not the right place for my daughter, I wanted a place where she could play with other kids and enjoy herself while she learned some things in an organised manner, not be forced to finish 30 sheets of assignments in 3 months.
A lot of schools take Montessori syllabus and mash it up with something else to form a concoction that I don't think they understand themselves well enough and even worse impose it on children.
Basic hygiene and safety lacks in many schools and one particular school was so small that the teacher said that they would use the balcony of the apartment for kids to play where every day the balcony would be filled with one of these things (Soft Balls / Sand / Water ), what if one of the kids jumped out of the balcony!
Finally we found the best possible play school in Chennai, even if it was not close to where we live we decided it was the best in Chennai and we went for it. If you want to know where it is and more details call me or mail me and I ll give you the details.
We took her on the day of Vijay Dashami, a Sunday and enrolled her. The first day was fun where we sat next to her in the school and she had a great time playing with the toys etc. She insisted to carry her own pooh bag that had her water and snack (see pic below).
We prepared Smayu for the following day telling her that she should not cry and have a good time. Obviously she was crying when she was asked to go inside without anyone but stayed for half an hour with her mentor and came back with lots of goodies.
When I met her later in the evening to ask her what she did at School, she said she met an aunty (mentor) and said that she cried. However she was mighty excited to get her new school bag (almost as tall as her) and wanted to sleep wearing it. She went the next day with her new bag, as usual she insisted that she wore the bag and did not want any help carrying it (see pic below).
On her 2nd day @ school she did not cry and spent slightly longer before coming back home, on the 3rd day she refused to leave school and would not let go off the mentor to come to her mom! She had a hearty meal at school and as my Bro tells me that is the sign of acceptance, when kids have a meal without inhibition it means that they are comfortable with the place, kudos to the team of mentors and managers of school for making Smayu feel @home in such a short span.
It is very pleasing to see Smayu growing and take on such changes with elegance. I guess thats life, we all evolve.
