Many friends have asked why are we sending her to school so early? Well, the first big reason is, our domestic helper, Nur, is going home for good in Oct. She has done a fantastic job in taking care of Sofia since birth and they are really close.
We hope to achieve the following by sending Sofia to school:
1. Make Sofia less close to Nur by introducing more people into her life.
2. Make Sofia more independent by taking away her "personal maid".
3. Improve Sofia's social skills (right now she would cry whenever we bring her to somewhere new and cling onto us like a koala).
So you can imagine during the drive to school this morning, my mind almost exploded with so many worries, all the "what ifs' was just zooming across my mind one after the other. Of course I did the preconditioning thing by telling Sofia the night before that we were going to school the next day and she SHOULD NOT CRY in school. I went through this with her again in the morning.
Off we went. They had water play on Friday mornings, using a plastic pool filled with about 5 inches of water in the garden and all the kids were just enjoying it and basking in the morning sun. It was a PERFECT start. Sofia loves water and seeing so many kids playing together happily simply knock down all her defences. She was a bit skeptical during the first 5 minutes but no crying, brawling, clinging onto my leg or trying to "disappear" into me. I was so so happy, almost tempted to join her in the pool and splash around with her!
We had story time after that but she was more keen to explore the reading room and spent time checking out the toys, books, etc. After that, they had a small tea break where each kid was given a slice of bread and a bit of jam to eat. Sofia happily fooled around with the plastic knife and jam, something we would not allow at home. So school is fun eh? Music class followed after the break and they joined the older kids to sing English and Mandarin songs with many funny actions. At this point, Sofia was already so comfortable with the place that she started exploring the ground floor - the admin office, the room at the back ... I just stood there observing her, smiling from ear to ear.
We called it a day for her at about 1130am, though the half-day session we enrolled her for ends at 1230pm. Sofia was tired and it was close to her naptime so I packed her into the car with me with her milk bottle. Guess what? She fell asleep within 3 mins! It must have been an exciting and tiring day for her.
As for me, I felt pretty good with the school cos her class is small, only four toddlers with two teachers and the other three kids do not look like potential bullies or hooligans. I will be able to sit in with her for another week, after that, she will be on her own, well, wish us luck!
