Hi everyone,
How are you?! I hope your hols were great and you relaxed and had tons fun. We are now back to school with many new and old children (Amaranta, Assia, Federico, Giulia, Cristian, Luca, Elena L., Aurora, Isla, Paola, ElenaP., Pietro,
Filippo, Marco, Lukas, Diego, Penelope, Keyla, Bianca, Cesare, Gabriele and Marta); over the year we will find a nickname for each one of them, I can assure you. This year EY Department is one big and smiley family where those in charge (hopefully children will listen to us, fingers crossed) are Ms Catriona, Ms Flavia and Ms Andra. The name of this big and crazy family is “EY Team.”
So let’s see what’s going on in these two colorful classes. Even though we are talking about toddlers and very very very young children, the month of September is pretty hard and difficult for those guys because all the new children need to go through a long and stressful period, AKA “Settling-in or Adjustment Period” which is a time interval (whose length depends on the child) during which the child has to get used to new faces (teachers and assistants) and a new environment (school); whereas the old children need to get back into the routine. May I say that one of the hardest things for a child to understand is that he needs to come to school every day 5 days per week, because the first days he thinks he is in a playground and he thinks “ok, I had fun, I played with the teacher and some other children… now let’s go home mummy and daddy!,” in other words he needs to get into the routine. So the first weeks were of adjustment where the children had the chance to get to know each other, understand the different play areas of our class and get familiar with news faces (Ms Catriona, Ms Flavia and Ms Andra). Then over the last weeks we focused on the “perception of ourselves” and being part of a group. This is why we also focused on the fact that each child is part of a group and that every group forms a class and every class has its own routine and rules, such as good manners (sharing, waiting for turns, asking for help etc…). This is why we also explored the different greetings that we are supposed to use to be polite when we meet other people as “good morning” when we enter for the first time in a place or “good bye” when we leave a place, “thank you” when we leave the kitchen, and so on and so forth. So even if EY Team is formed by “little people” I can assure you that they are working hard on themselves and succeed in
simple but very important and solid things.
Can’t wait to have fun with the lil ones over next month.
ps. here attached you will find a beautiful poem (thanks Ms Emma!) that will show
you what “settling-in period” means for both parents and children
See ya
The “EY Team”