First day of school

Maya went off to her first day of preschool today after our long trip back to Cairo from the U.S., and she was a bit jet lagged but she made it. Mike took her to school (because Maya failed to wake me from my jet lagged stupor).

Maya is going to go to school five days a week this year, from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., and according to her school director she will have to be a little more serious about school this year because she is now one of the big kids.

Mike told the school director that Maya had started getting a little interested in letters this summer while we were in the U.S., likely due to more exposure from the overwhelming presence of English signs everywhere. He also found out an interesting tidbit about Maya's school behavior.

Apparently last year unbeknownst to us, the director of Maya's preschool had tried to have Maya do lessons and worksheets with the bigger kids. But Maya had often refused to finish and gone off to play in the baby room instead. That sneaky kid!!. Maya was a little young for the lessons and the school is sort of Montessori-ish and they were not keen to force her. So she got away with it -- which is fine with us as we don't want to push to much academic stuff on her in preschool anyway!

But this year she will be with the bigger kids and she is going to do the big kid lessons. And the director of the school (who also is very involved and works especially with the older kids) thinks that since Maya is now going to school five days a week, it will be easier to get her to focus on learning rather than doing play kitchen all day long...

No more baby room for you, kid!

Maya's new school

Here are a couple of shots of Maya in her new school, or rather same school with new facilities. Most of the pictures have other kids in them, so I can't post a lot. But the new school building is a huge improvement over the old school. There is so much more room indoors, and a lot more outside space for the kids to play. I hope the extra space means they will get to do a lot more interesting projects!

On another note, you might have noticed that Maya is completely dressing herself these days. In these pictures, her outfit is a purple striped dress over a yellow skirt over striped pink pajama pants, with bright yellow socks and new sneakers her grandparents brought from the USA.

Today, she wanted to wear a green T-shirt and pink tights. She was NOT happy with our insistence that she had to put something, anything really, on over the tights.

Maya's preschool is moving!

That's right! Maya's preschool is getting some new digs. They are moving from a crowded garden apartment to a small villa across the street. We just got a note about it today. I am really happy about it, as the space the school is in now is so small, and the kids will have a lot more space after the move. I can't wait to see the new place!

I'm also happy now that we decided to keep her at Small World. The main concern I had about the school was that the facilities were a bit cramped, especially compared to several other trendy preschools that have their own buildings. The other preschools are nice, but their classes are arranged by age, so Maya would have been up to a full year older than other kids in her class based on when her birthday is, which wouldn't have been much fun for her. Or we could have bumped her up to the older class, but then she would have had the opposite problem and been the youngest in her class.

I know I have raved about Maya's school before, but it is just so nice that she can play with kids of lots of different ages and doesn't have to be grouped with only her same-age peers, and also that she is in a school that focuses on learning through play. I think almost all of the kids Maya plays with regularly are a bit older than her. But she also gets to learn how to be nice and play gentle with the younger kids. So it is a really good social experience for her. And now it is going to be in better facilities too!

More preschool

Maya is now officially going to preschool three days a week. Now, you might wonder how this is happening since I vowed to only have her go twice a week until she was 4.

Maya, however, had other ideas. She took matters into her own hands and discussed it with her preschool teacher, telling her that she wanted to come to preschool more. Her teacher wisely told her to take it up with mom and dad, which she did.

Maya has always known intrinsically what is best for her. She decided when to move to her big bed. She decided when to do potty training. She decided when she wanted to swim on her own and let go of her mommy. So if she is dying for more preschool, then she can go more. She absolutely loves it.

And I have to say that while there are a couple things I don't love about her preschool, I do LOVE that it is a mixed-age school. She is seeing what the big kids do, and she wants to do it too. It is a great environment for learning, at least for a kid like Maya. She is learning to trace her letters now, because she insisted to do it like the big kids. And she can cut with scissors on her own because the big kids do it. She is learning a lot at school. And she loves it.

Preschool pictures

Maya's preschool had a party today for the big kids' graduation and the end of the school year. So we went, and they sang songs in English and Arabic, and then had pizza, and then Maya showed us around.

These pictures are from the playground at our club and in the circle time room at preschool. Maya loved showing us around.

Maya and school

I haven't totally dropped off the planet. But unfortunately, more than a month after we moved into our new place, we still have not managed to get the state-run telephone company to successfully hook up our internet. So I am still on a really slow dial-up account, and I can't even post pictures -- believe me, I tried!! Anyway, we are hopeful to have real internet soon...

Maya has been doing great at school. She loves it! She has gone four times so far, and she has not cried even once when we left, although she was pretty clingy the first three times. Then on day four, she just walked in, saw some other girls, exclaimed "I play my friends", and ran inside. Did I mention that she is going to school with no diapers? That's right! And she has only had one accident at school so far, which I think is terrific!

Also, I am in love with Maya's preschool! I love the age-mixing at the school. I love that it is small and cozy. And I love that it is totally play-based. I also think they organise the activities really well. It is free play when the kids arrive in the morning, but that is also the time they do their art project of the day. So they basically get pulled aside to do art, or do it in a sort of starggered way as kids arrive in the morning. So they seem to get lots of individual attention with the projects. They have also done really cool activities. One morning, the activity was making pancakes. They also did painting, then turned their painting into paper airplanes. Another day they painted pre-made newspaper hats. And they have outdoor time and circle time every day -- or at least that's what we think. Maya seems to think school is a private affair, and when we ask her what she did every day, she just shrugs her shoulders...

What is also cool is that Maya is showing a huge burst of development since going to school also. All of a sudden she is interested in spatial games -- like shape sorting or stacking or puzzles. She previously was never interested in these types of toys, preferring to focus exclusively on her two favorite activities -- sports and talking. So it's been cool to see her expanding her interests since starting school. And she has been wanting to play "teacher" with us at home, which basically amounts to setting up chairs and telling us what to do.

Just dropped Maya off at preschool

I'm a bit sad about it, but Maya will be OK there. She was delaying getting ready this morning, not wanting to get dressed and saying she wanted to watch Sesame Street instead of getting ready. We bargained with her and let her watch a 5-minute Sesame Street video clip on Mike's computer while eating a yoghurt at the table.

We showed her what we had packed her for lunch, and that she had a little "treat" inside. In a retro baby moment, she then demanded to ride to preschool in her stroller rather than walk.

Once we got to the school, she was a bit nervous and clingy, and was playing with the other kids but also looking back to check that we were still there. After about 10-15 minutes, we told her it was time for us to go, and she walked us to the door and we left. And she was totally fine. No tears or anything! So we'll see how it went this afternoon...

In other news, a decision on preschool

We have decided to send Maya to preschool number 1 for two days a week. Instead of starting in September, we are hoping to start when the preschool's summer session begins. We have been talking about preschool with Maya, have shown her a get-ready-for-school episode of Sesame Street, and have taken her on several walks to see her new school.

Of course, we still have to actually make the call to enrol her, but the preschool director said there is plenty of space. So it shouldn't be a problem.

It is amazing how hard a decision it actually is on where to send a child for preschool. And in some bizarre way, the fact that preschool 2 had a waiting list to get in actually made me doubt our initial reaction that preschool 1 was the best fit for us. I mean, if people are waiting to get in, then surely the school must be the best, right? Even if our instincts tell us otherwise.

What swayed us is that we saw the kids at preschool 1 playing together peacefully. We saw them eagerly accept our daughter into their group, with the teacher's encouragement. When Maya was trying to grab a toy from another child, we saw the teachers pause to see if the two kids would work it out, and then comment: "Look, they're negotiating over it." And we decided that our priority for school right now is not learning "school stuff", but learning self-awareness and kindness and sharing. So preschool 1 it is!

Preschool choices

Today we went preschool hunting for Maya for September. We visited three schools, all of them very different. One thing we discovered is that Maya is ready for preschool now. As in NOW! As in right this minute!!

At the first preschool we visited, Maya immediately went in and started playing with the other kids (it was free play time when we arrived). She played house and tea party with some older girls, and talked to the teachers, visited all the rooms by herself, and generally was not at all concerned about being in a new place. When they sat down for circle time, Maya announced that it was “teacher time” and sat down with them. So now we are rethinking if we really want to wait until September or if we should just start her now. We are planning to do about 2 mornings a week of preschool, and she will be with Tibby the rest of the time.

So I would appreciate everybody’s thoughts on the various preschool options. All are walking distance from our house. Here is a summary of what we found at the school, in the order we visited them.

1) This is a small preschool that seems very play-based. They seem to have different activities going on in different rooms, like art, Arabic, etc. The main room has different stations like a house area and a puzzle area and a block area. The toys are educational. The teachers seem very attentive and are down on the ground at child-eye level interacting with the kids and sort of directing the play. The director spent quite a bit of time talking to us. The day starts with free play, then circle time, then snack, and then I kind of forget. The hours are 8ish to 1 p.m.
· The kids are not separated based on age level, but sort of intermix.
· The director seems very warm and all the teachers seem warm and kind.
· Very clean.
· Small to medium sized outdoor playground with climbing toys, a swingset, slides. The ground is sand. Some toys look a little old but all are age appropriate.
· Lots of diversity including one African teacher, and several African students, which is good for Maya. But also diverse in other aspects as there are also Asian, Arab, American and European kids there. But the dolls I saw the kids playing with were all white…(maybe if we enrol Maya we can donate a black doll).
· A bit cramped inside compared to the other schools we saw.
· They teach the kids some Arabic, although the language of the school is English.
· Maya’s friend Bug (also Ethiopian) goes there, and her friend K. is probably going to enrol as well.
· Kids all seemed happy and engaged during our visit.
· No wait list.
· The overall vibe is very maternal.

2) This preschool is one of the main feeder preschools to the big international school here. It is a large preschool in a big two-story building with the littler kids on the first floor and the older kids on the second floor. Each class is in one room, and the rooms have stations, like an imagination station, house station, art station, etc. The teachers seem young and enthusiastic, and the director spent quite some time talking to us. The schedule is similar to preschool 1, and the learning is also play based.
· Kids are separated by age and there is a 2-1/2 to 3 year old class, and a 3 to 3-1/2 year old class. The director immediately said she would be flexible about where to place Maya (because she is between age groups and will be a month shy of 3 in September when the school year starts) and seemed to think she would do better in the older class due to her verbal skills. I was impressed she was paying attention to Maya and showed an instinct for flexibility.
· Pretty clean, but not as clean as preschool 1. It looked like there was some water on a mat in the imagination station (maybe an accident or a spill) in the little kids room that had not been cleaned up.
· Large playground outside with big plastic climbing gym and a bigger playset for older kids (though it is the same stuff that is at every other playground in Egypt so not really unique). Playground is on Astroturf over a hard surface, so maybe not so good for bumped heads.
· Lots of diversity in the student population, with multiple black students in each class and lots of Asian, Arab, American and European students as well. Actually saw a black doll on offer.
· Spacious inside, although the kids were all in outdoor play when we saw the little kid classrooms, so it’s hard to say if it would feel cramped. But the classrooms are larger than in preschool 1.
· All English with no Arabic.
· No friends at the school that we know of.
· We are number 5 on the wait list for September for the older class, with two of those before us not expected to take a seat if offered. So we could probably get a space if we want one, especially since we only want part time.
· Kids seemed happy.
· The vibe is very school-like although still warm.

3) This is a brand new preschool that is just opening. It is in a big house and has a spacious outdoor area. It was very well decorated, and lots of money and effort has clearly been put into the facilities, but the place seemed cold and sterile. The hours are from 8ish to 2 p.m., with no option for just coming 2-3 days a week, even for a 2-year-old.
· It’s hard to say if this place would be very diverse. But I noticed a wall display of the world included exhibits on many countries including Egypt, Germany, Britain, China and Canada but not a single country in sub-Saharan Africa. That was not encouraging.
· The director explained the reason for not allowing part time is that the kids might fall behind if they only come three times a week while others come five times. (Really!! These are 2-year-olds we are talking about. It’s not like they are teaching algebra, and it’s not like the kids just turn their brains off when they leave school)
· It’s significantly more expensive than preschools one and two, although still affordable for us.
· Vibe is very status-oriented.


OK, so what do you all think.? Mike and I are leaning toward preschool 1, although some elements of preschool 2 seem really nice as well. And I feel like Maya might “outgrow” preschool 1 before she starts kindergarten, and at that point preschool 2 might be a better fit. But I like the kind of small atmosphere for a 2-year-old at preschool 1. Anybody want to give some advice?