School days...dear old golden rule days

Julian is in scuola materna ( preschool) along with other 3-5 years olds. The preschool is provided for everyone free of charge from the government. ( not sure which level provides what between national, regional or provincial and comune/city governments) Here is Neive, the preschool runs from 8:10 - 4:20, though one can opt for half day and in fact the times seem rather flexible. Tuesdays and Fridays are always half days. The class right now has the mix of all the preschoolers, but as the year progressed the group will spend more time divided into the three age groups ( 3, 4 and 5 which correspond to preschool, preK and Kindergarten). My experience is with a preschool in Portland that was highly organized with a medium emphasis on anything academic before kindergarten - more emphasis on learning to socialize etc. Here chaos seems to reign? This may change as the kids get into the year more I am not sure? I hope so. From what I can tell, the Pandas - which are the kindergarteners like Julian- mostly already know how to write their name. Perhaps they will learn more writing soon as we have just been asked to bring three notebooks for Julian. The kids all - except Julian- 1. eat with bibs, 2. take naps. Julian was appalled the the thought of using a bib! There are about 15 kids per class and the teachers team teach - at least right now. None of Julian's teachers speak English.

Today Carlo and I went to the preschool to teach a little English, It was fun and the kids were smiling but shy of course. One thing I noticed was that during coloring time, some kids were coloring the hands purple or green and the teachers would tell them your hands are not purple - and have the kids use pink color instead! Same with hair black or brown not green.

Augustin is in the Scuola Elementare. He has five teachers for the various subjects that they do. The kids though stay in one classroom. He has three workbooks and multiple notebooks with prescribed colored covers per subject for them. He also has a homework diary. Strangely not all homework assignments are written in there? Confusing to me. He is learning Italian and cursive writing in addition to the standard third grade topics ( history, geography, science, math, and reading and writing )but is opted out of religion. Recently, his writing assignments included descriptive writing, fictional writing and an essay about a time he felt embarrassed. The science is rather theoretical like what is science and how do scientists work etc etc. No hands on sciency stuff so far. Math seems standard math stuff - right now large columns of addition and subtraction. Augustin has 17 in his class. His classes run 8:05 - 4:30 - though like Julian Tuesdays and Fridays are half days. Some of Augustin's teacher speak English. There is an English teacher too and obviously she does.

Neatness is big here...with each paper pasted into the quaderno ( notebook). Also parents have to sign the diary at times acknowledging receipt of a note or form letter or whatever.

It seems that the playground has "rules" more similar to when I grew up rather than what I have noticed these days in Portland public schools. A little more rowdy let's just say.

Altogether, things seem fine at the school. As always, some of the things I notice may be particular to Neive or to smaller towns ( Neive has ~3000 people) in Italy rather than to the more cosmopolitan areas.

Well them's the school observations so far....

JT