Personal experience: kindergarten in New York

Photo: Facebook / Natalia Slavina

The year we went to pre-Kay, this is an American garden for four years. Everyone who was born in the relevant year is credited there. We had a 2011. New York recently launched a state free pre-kay program, that is, it pays for the entire budget. You can go to the municipal garden or private, the best, it does not matter. This year you will be paid in full.

No money was ever taken from us. Never. Twice asked to bring napkins and paper towels. If you can, of course.

We went to the municipal garden, but didn’t have time to go anywhere else. But I didn’t regret it at all. Although this is exactly the kindergarten that, looking at it on my last business trip, I thought - what a horror and what kind of parent you have to be to send your beloved child there. They walk on the bare asphalt, sit under a tree, a nondescript building, and how do they all fit there?

But this time I had no choice. The Russian garden at the UN delayed permission, despite the cost of 700 dollars. I went to a local paid kindergarten, where there is no pre-key, where everyone is in the same group of different ages, and came out in tears. I felt sorry for Tanya in advance. The children lay on the carpet and watched cartoons, and took turns walking in an area one by one square meter. And it costs about $800 a month. There were no openings at the local Montessori, and it cost about a thousand. In both cases, you pay an extra $20 for every half hour delay.

We were barely accepted into the municipal one. In the first days I was in shock. There is one small room per group (they call it a “room”). There is a carpet where children sit in "meetings", play and sleep. They sleep on the floor - they lay out rubber mattresses, lie down on them with their clothes on and cover themselves with towels from home. For the first month, Tanya’s head smelled terribly like a homeless mattress, and as a very nearsighted person, I react very strongly to smells. Therefore, I constantly washed her hair, but then I was advised to buy a special kindergarten sleeping “bag” - a bedding, blanket, pillow sewn together, and I stopped washing her hair. I mean, so often.

Photo: Facebook / Natalia Slavina

In this room there are tables with chairs, a playroom, shelves with books. Shelves for outerwear. Everything is very compact. There is no kitchen. For breakfast, they eat Sadikovskie muffins, cookies, washed down with diluted sweet water, dine with what they took from the house. We took a sausage or egg, chopped fruit, cucumber or carrot, sometimes yogurt and tea. Who what, in short. Absolutely not products containing nuts and grapes. Some are allergic to smell.

Photo: Facebook / Natalia Slavina

They walk twice - before bed and after. They can go on the asphalt, yes, but they can go to the territory of a neighboring school, not far away, there is a playground with slides and so on.
Kindergarten starts from 8:00 - 8:45 and ends exactly at 14:20. At 14:25 they call you and ask where you are, exactly.

At first, a feeling of wild pity for my child did not leave me. I compared the kindergarten with the Moscow one, in which there are cots, pajamas, porridge, soup, walks in the greenery and on the verandas, examinations of doctors. Where, after a long sleep, the caregivers brush the girls, where they watch the cap, do not allow a runny nose and the lack of replacement shoes.

Then a revolution took place in me. It was called “looking at childhood through the eyes of a child.” That is, I used to evaluate everything exclusively as a mother, according to certain criteria that seemed most important to me. And most of them were physiological requirements - food, sleep, no wind in the ears. And then, when we were able to move to a Russian kindergarten and Tanyusha was sobbing: “I want to go to an American one, I don’t want to go to a Russian one,” I began to evaluate this whole situation from the point of view of the kids. And these are completely different criteria. The most important one is this.

From a young age, educators, teachers, and most American parents treat children as equals, as full-fledged individuals, as complete adults. Therefore, they do not shout, do not press, do not pull, do not punish, do not hit, do not look down, do not drag by the hand, and in general. You don’t behave this way with adults, do you? Of course, they know that children are small, they don’t know how to do something, they try everything and do everything for the first time, but the attitude, the manner of conversation and education is not big in relation to the little one, smart to the stupid, experienced to the underdeveloped, but as a person with a personality . If you need to talk about something important, sit down next to him and talk eye to eye, and not with thunder from heaven so that he lifts his head. Now, if we take this most important principle as a basis, then from there come all the significant differences between the Russian (probably Soviet) education system (both in educational institutions and at home) from the American, Western one. Judge for yourself.

- Mom, you know, they never fight. Never at all,” Tanyusha said recently.
- Well, what about it? If you do something wrong, bad, they say something?
- Yes, they say. In such cute little voices they say “don’t do that” - don't do that. And smiling. It’s not at all terrible to say, but I don’t want to do anything bad anymore, they asked.

Photo: Facebook / Natalia Slavina

I have never seen children cry when they are led to kindergarten. Never. Parents, if desired, can be in the kindergarten with their children for the first hour.

Every morning, when Tanyusha comes to kindergarten, she is greeted by two teachers - Trish and Denis, who rejoice at her as if she were their own daughter, whom they had not seen for six months. For the first few months, Tanyusha pursed her lips when they greeted them and pointedly did not respond. My husband and I were worried - the bad manners were wild, we asked forgiveness for it. They said - what are you talking about! She's adapting, it's hard for her. If we, adults, were placed in a group where everyone spoke a foreign language, we would not say a word at all for a whole year, but she is so sweet and sociable. Once he gets used to it, he will say hello and say goodbye, don’t pay attention.

As soon as a child enters the room, he is immediately drawn into playing with children. If he doesn’t immediately find company, and it’s uncomfortable to be alone, then the teacher sits down with him - reads together, sculpts, draws. Other kids immediately join in.

Children are not aggressive, do not fight, do not take anything away, no one attacks anyone. They play all common toys. In the garden, you can bring your own from home, but only to sleep with her. Then she lies on the shelf.

Tanyusha’s main joy at first was called “they don’t make you sleep!” Sleep is the worst nightmare of her Moscow kindergarten. One day she was left there in bed for not sleeping and disturbing others. That is, after the “quiet hour” all the children got dressed and left the bedroom, and Tanyusha was left alone in the crib. Punished. It seems like nonsense. But for a three-year-old child it became a real stress. She didn’t tell me about it for several days, she thought I would scold me too, but then she finally told me. At the same time she cried bitterly. And then she talked about it every day, even several times a day - probably for six months, no less. About what they left behind. Everyone left, and she lay there.

- Mommy, I was so worried! I don't want this anymore! They are bad in this kindergarten, they don’t like me.

And here it turned out:

“They don’t make you sleep at all!” At all! They say this - sleep if you want, or not if you want. Just rest quietly. And they turn on beautiful music. Mommy, you have no idea, and suddenly I fall asleep! And I sleep! And you have to wake up when the music turns off. Now, if I hear this music, I immediately fall asleep!

They don’t force you to eat - if you’re hungry, eat anyway. The child always cleans up after himself after lunch, games, and sleep. He wipes the table with a cloth, puts blankets, mattresses, toys on shelves, books in a row. Wash your hands 100 times a day. This is a must, everyone does it.

Photo: Facebook / Natalia Slavina

At first I was indignant that Tanyusha came home disheveled, her hat on her side, in her lunch box (where I put lunch) - everything was upside down. How come?! Why aren't they following her? Then I understood. Initially, the approach is this: a child of 4 years old already knows how to do everything himself, take care of himself and clean. If the zipper doesn’t fasten, a hairpin falls off your head, or the lid doesn’t open, the teacher won’t immediately fly up like a kite to the rescue. No. In this case, the child comes up and says: “I need your help.” And they help him. But until the child asks, he tries to do everything himself. As a result, by the end of the year, children are absolutely independent - zippers and buttons are fastened, hairpins are put in pockets, the lunch box is in complete order. And at home Tanyusha periodically calls me: “Mom! I need your help!". It sounds a little strange, of course, but she translates simply - I need your help!

Every day there are classes. Various - mathematics, writing, drawing, music, dancing, the world around us. Only children don’t know that this is an activity, they think it’s a game. Everything is a game.

Here comes the baby, and on the door there is a check-in, registration, so to speak. Such a Whatman paper, cut in half. On one side there are photos of children with their names attached to Velcro. The child takes his and attaches it to the other half - that is, he came and registered. When he leaves, check out, reverse the process. Six months later the photograph was removed, leaving the name. This means the child is already reading his name. Moreover, its full version.

Photo: Facebook / Natalia Slavina

In addition, on every drawing and craft they make during the week (and they make a lot of them, then give them home on Fridays), they write their name. After a few months, everyone knows how their full name is not only read, but also written - and in written letters. At the same time, they can read the names of friends.

Over the course of a year, they learned the entire alphabet (the song really helps), counting to 50, writing numbers up to 20, the names of all the planets, which one is closer to the sun, which one is further away, which one is cold, which one is hot. Many games, drawings, and projects were devoted to this. Together they made a huge, wall-sized model of the solar system - colored planets are located in the dark sky. Tanyusha knows everything by heart.

Passed fruit. Cut apples, consider what it consists of, draw. Studied the seed.

Toward the summer, they planted seeds and grew plants. Each had his own, for which he was responsible, watered, watched. Then adult plants landed already on the street.

Photo: Facebook / Natalia Slavina

And they also went through, for example, the process of turning an egg into a caterpillar, pupa, or butterfly. They drew it, sculpted it, glued it into three-dimensional drawings. But the main thing is... they raised their own butterflies. A large net was suspended in the room - like a wide pipe. Each child is assigned an “egg”, and later a caterpillar, a pupa. They were attached to the walls of the net, and the children watched their charges, fed them (leaves, water, oranges), noted their development - they kept a diary in which they drew each new state of the insect.

After some time, they had a day of “liberation of the butterfly.” Early in the morning, everyone took their own butterfly, put it on their finger, went outside and released it into the wild. Tanyusha and I then spent a week discussing where she is now, her Elsa is the most beautiful butterfly in the world.

There were many such special days. In the fall there was a “puddle day.” It was necessary to come to the kindergarten in everything waterproof. And the children filled puddles, jumped into them, rolled around and behaved like complete piglets.

The same thing happened in winter. It was called “snowball day” - after a big snowfall. They rolled around in the snow in every possible way, threw themselves at each other, sculpted their own snowmen and everyone else’s, and simply had a blast in the snow.

In the summer it was “splash day.” Everyone was in swimsuits and ran under the fountain, watered each other, and then dried in the sun and tanned.

They were told about fire safety. A real fireman came to the room and explained everything, and then a real fire truck with a real team drove up to the kindergarten, and the children climbed inside, tried on a uniform, spun the hoses and entered with delight.

Of course, there were holidays - Halloween, Christmas, Thanksgiving. On this day, we were given a “magic thanksgiving stone” so that we could play the game at home. The family gathers at the table, the first one takes a stone (anything, of course - a cup, pen, toy, napkin) and says what he thanks for the past day, and passes the stone to the next one. It turns out that you can be grateful for a lot in one day.

We often play this game now. We thank the day, week, this house, our planet, each of us. Very soulfully and well proves how in everything and everyone you can always find a lot of positive, kind, the very best and be grateful for it.

At Christmas, each child gave a gift to each person in the group. Secret. And on the eve of the holiday, Tanyusha brought a bag of gifts from friends, each with a written word on who the giver was. She was completely happy. There were also gifts from the teachers. Not at the expense of the parents. No. Probably from kindergarten. But definitely, Denis and Trish themselves came up with some pencils, erasers, Christmas tree decorations...

Photo: Facebook / Natalia Slavina

At the end of the year, much was devoted to the upcoming new school year, Kindergarten. They went to school, where many will go in September, they were taken to classrooms, halls, and the dining room. The main thing that made them happy was that they had breakfast in the school cafeteria:

- Mommy, we ate what the schoolchildren ate! It's very tasty, a lot of it, I really liked it! Trays, juices, it's so grown-up!

There was a "pajama party", a day with the parents (where we spent a couple of hours with them, reading, studying, eating), and then there was a "stranger reading" event. Relatives were supposed to come from each family - preferably not mom or even dad: grandmother, grandfather, adult brother, sister, etc. Children sit with their eyes closed, a stranger comes in, says hello, they try to guess who it is, then open eyes and the little relative of the stranger (all secretly because) is wildly rejoicing. Then the stranger reads to the children the fairy tale that he loved most as a child.

There was such a promotion - “treasure chest”. In turn, each family received an empty beautiful box to take home. And you had to put something there that distinguishes your nation, historical homeland, culture from others. Then you give the box back, and the kid speaks in front of the group, pulling out another object from the box and telling what it is, how and why. And what kind of homeland does he have anyway? This is national food, musical instruments, clothing, toys, songs, whatever. Apparently it’s called “lessons of patriotism.” Only your little homeland and family.

It was graduation. Fast. Three songs, poems, a scene from the life of space (the children were planets). The teachers cried and said how lucky they were that parents “shared” their best children in the world with them. Each was given a prize for their individual merits - “helping hand”, “main friend”, “chief tidyist”, “flower lover” and so on. Denis and Trish presented small albums with photographs of our children that they had taken throughout the year with their mobile phones. They presented a large album - where they told what the child loves most, who he is friends with, who he wants to be, his opinions on important issues. The album contains some of Tanya's drawings, a recipe for a banana pie that they made together, cupcakes, dough from which to sculpt, autographs and photos of all the children, wishes from the teachers. Everything was done by hand, with a pen, with glue - the teachers sat and made things.

There were birthdays - autumn, winter, spring and summer. The birthday boys and their teachers baked cupcakes in the morning, which they then all ate together on the holiday.

Twice a year were parent meetings. Each parent is given 15 minutes, which are reserved in advance. And one-on-one conversation with a tutor. They tell you how a child communicates with children, how it assimilates new information, how it behaves in class, what progress it considers, reads, writes, performs assignments, adheres to discipline, how it reacts to difficulties, what character, temperament, hobbies, etc. Then they handed it all in writing. At no time did the tutor complain about the child either at the meeting or during the year. Only praise and objective facts.

Denis and Trish are very funny, funny. Once I came a little earlier and heard how they dragged into the room some kind of installation that changes voices. The children and the teachers took turns singing the songs, speaking the alphabet, reading the poems and making very funny voices. And for about fifteen minutes the whole group loudly, for the whole kindergarten, laughed heartily.

Well, just interesting. If a child has a birthday and he does not celebrate it in the kindergarten, then the whole group should be invited, not selectively, so that no one is hurt.

Kindergarten pre-key is not to free the mother from the child, but to prepare her for school. Therefore, it’s only half a day, you can’t be late, the children are free at two o’clock and have a hot lunch at home.

Three days can be missed due to illness, warning the caregiver. If longer, need a certificate from a doctor that was sick and healthy.

Without mandatory vaccinations, they will never take anywhere, in any kindergarten and school.

A shift to kindergarten is only needed in dirty weather - somewhere from November to April. The most welcome shoes (not in winter, of course) are Velcro sneakers.

Photo: Facebook / Natalia Slavina

Children call caregivers by name, they call babies affectionately, at home. Tanya was called Tati.

- Mommy, I miss kindergarten very much.
- Yes? What did you like there?
- All.
- What exactly?
- There are a lot of wonderful things and interesting things there. And Trish once told us to close our eyes, and when we opened them, her clothes were all pink. Because she is a sorceress! I love it when the teachers are wizards and the kindergarten is like a circus.
- Circus?!
- Yes. The circus is when it’s very interesting and everyone is smiling!

You can read more about the kindergarten to which Natalia's daughter went to the story. Towel.

Read also on ForumDaily:

Personal experience: “the first of September” in an American school

Mother tongue: how to teach a child the Russian language in the USA

History of Muscovites who moved to California

How to find a babysitter in the USA

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