Big Day

Monday was a big day for the McKenna-Macdonalds. Eloïse attended peuterspeelzaal, or play school.

As it was her first day, we both stayed with her for the whole session.

As we entered at 13:30, she began to cautiously look around. Wanda, the peuterleidster, encouraged her to come into the sand pit, which she did. It wasn’t long before she was building sandcastles, which signalled the start of an afternoon packed with stimulating activities.

There was playing with water, time to play with toys, gluing paper leaves onto a paper tree, story time with Wanda, walking in a circle and singing nursery rhymes.

Of course, there’s also biscuit time, when all of the children sit at a table and it’s the turn of one of them to bring a tin of biscuits around to all the others. They wash their biscuit down with a cup of squash.

At the end of the day, a tray is brought upstairs by the assisting parent (all parents are expected to help out for an afternoon from time to time) containing all of the peeled fruit that the children brought that day. The toddlers sit in a circle and the tray is passed around until all of the fruit has been eaten. It’s a delightful sight.

The first day was thus a big success. She not only held her own in a new environment, but seemed to throughly enjoy almost all of the activities. Only walking in a circle, whilst holding hands and singing nursery rhymes was something she didn’t want to do.

On Tuesday, I left after the first half an hour and Sarah left after a further fifteen minutes. I went back two hours later to see how she was doing and was pleasantly surprised to find her busily painting a paper hedgehog. She was having a whale of a time and missed story time in order to paint a second hedgehog.

At 17:00, it was all I could do to get her to leave. We spent a further twenty minutes playing in the garden of the peuterspeelzaal.

Today, Eloïse had her first typical day at the peuterspeelzaal. Sarah took her at 13:00 and left with the other parents at 14:00. She didn’t return until 17:00. When she arrived, Eloïse was perfectly happy and had not been asking for either of us.

When she got home, she showed me the paper squirrel she had been playing with.

It’s still early days, but any fears we might have had that the transition from her parents’ side to peuterspeelzaal might be a difficult one have more or less been allayed. Our daughter has a secure family background and that clearly allows her to take strides into new and unfamiliar situations with the confidence that we’re there to protect and encourage her, if needed.

Our little girl is blossoming into a confident and intrepid little person. We’re filled with pride.