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In New South Wales, kids need to start school when they are between 4.5 and 6. This means that for children born between January and June, parents have the choice which year to start school. Many parents are inclined to hold back boys on the assumption they are socially less mature. Other parents may base their decisions on what might happen when kids turn 18 and get their driving license. If you hold them back, they will be driving their younger class mates around, while they would be driven around by their older mates when you send them straight away. Jan thinks all these considerations are nuts and kids should go to school as soon as they are ready, i.e. at the first opportunity unless pre-school teachers recommend otherwise. Luckily, pre-school teachers and mum agreed Piet was ready.
As Piet had been in pre-school for 3-year olds, many friends are having their birthdays. He was invited to Leo's Star Wars party, where they played hide and seek, ate donuts on a string (like koekhappen) and all had a turn at whacking a pinjata (which will be hit until the sweets drop out). So far, Emma has been able to tag along to all Piet's parties, though not the other way around.
On Saturday morning, Piet and Emma have their swimming lesson. They started to enjoy it a few months ago and can now swim a meter or two independently. At the end of the lesson, they often need to dive into the pool while grabbing their goggles. Later that day, we went for a dinner and swim at Zoe and Harris's place. They were in Piet's class at pre-school, but as they are twins and hence pre-mature, they have been held back a year and now do the 4-year olds pre-school, which is three days a week. On Sunday, mum took Emma with Katy and her mum to a Mozart-for-children concert in the opera house. Katy was with Emma in nursery last year and will be going to the same school as her next year. Piet had to drop out for the concert as he had a day of games with Dutch school.
Piet's school organised a Harmony day. Each class got assigned a country and Piet's class did the Netherlands. Mum baked aardappelkroketten (mashed potatoes, battered and deep fried). Other mums baked poffertjes, and there were cheese cubes on sticks with Dutch flags, speculaas and stroopwafels. In the background is the Brazil stall. In total, thirty-odd countries were represented. In their (staggered) breaks, kids could go round all stalls and get something to eat.
Piet is generally a good boy at school. His teacher, miss Camphin, gives him lots of stickers as reward. Often, Piet and Emma can play together nicely. For example, Piet helped Emma to tape her drawing to the deck on a windy day.
Sometimes, the kids are rather obstinate. On one such day, mum introduced a list with frowny faces. Bad behaviour leads to a frowny face and five faces means not getting to choose any videos in the daily hour of watching videos. Both kids got up to three faces when Piet gave one of his stickers to Emma as she had done such a good job with a jigsaw puzzle, which was so heart warming that mum crossed off a frowny face each. A few days later, Piet caught mum laughing 'at him' (because of a funny story he told), so he decided mum and dad deserved their own frowny face list. The punishment for five faces is not getting to read the newspaper. We only get a free daily newspaper, so that threat is largely symbolic, a bit like not getting to choose videos as you would get to choose all videos once your sibling reaches five faces.
This year, we got some pets, overcoming dad's general resistance. Piet and Emma like feeding Orange and Safari.
