Playgroup trial - FAIL.

And... here we go again.

University semester commences today. Which means I'm a student again until the end of semester 2 in October. I'm excited to be studying again, but at the same time, feeling a tad bit guilty and deflated that the next 7 or 8 months would be an incredibly busy time for me again. It would mean neglecting my husband and my baby boy a little here and there. It would mean having to study and do assignments instead of enjoying my time with them. But I am hoping that my determination to remain organised and on top of it all throughout this academic year would help me prioritise and make it all work for us.

This would also mean that more likely than not, blogging will start taking a back seat again so I'll be writing a little less. That also makes me a little sad because I love blogging. I love being able to write freely and express my thoughts and feelings. Perhaps it'll just mean I need to make the time for it if it's that important to me, isn't it? :)

Anyway, point of my post today.

I took Xander to a playgroup trial class today. It's one of those mommy and me type of thing where the parent stays the whole time and is an active participant of the session. So it's not one of those where I dump my kid there for someone else to deal with things. It runs just once a week for 2 hours in the morning, at the local community centre and costs about $88 per term (10 weeks thereabouts). Unfortunately, I was supremely disappointed by the experience. There was no structure, no intentional guidance by the 'teacher' when it comes to play time, and it seemed like they simply brought out giant boxes of toys (all plastic and grubby looking by the way) scatter them about the room and let the children go wild. Now, I'm all for free play and truly believe that children benefit immensely from child-directed learning. But I also believe that the role of a teacher/facilitator in such a playgroup setting is to design specific open-ended activities that each has a main purpose and allow the children to explore as they are interested. The idea is not to force them to engage in activities that they are not interested in, but to provide them with a limited number of options of activities to engage in, according to their own interests. And where we were at, had no such teacher.

During craft time, she brought out cut outs of Australian animals. I got excited for a minute, thinking the children will all be introduced to these animals. Whether it be a story, a picture book, little figurines, or even giant posters. But nope. Didn't happen. She set the stuff down on the table, with some glue, some paint brushes, bowls filled with cut up coloured cellophane paper, and just let the children go at it. And completely ignoring the fact that there was a young one in the class (Xander) who was the youngest, the newest (first session!) and had completely zero clue what was going on! If the idea is for me to be completely responsible for guiding my child, I would have been able to do that in the comfort of my own home!

Xander obviously was more interested in the glue than anything else so he stuck his fingers into the tray of glue. I caught him before he could put it into his mouth and had to hold his hands so that he wouldn't put it into his mouth while she scrambled to get a wet cloth for me to clean him up. But not before she burst out laughing at the sight of Xander's hands full of glue. Like literally, she LOLed at him. I'm sorry but that got my hackles up and I was super annoyed. Like really really REALLY ANNOYED. How dare you laugh at my son for something he does that is completely within his developmental stage. How dare you make fun of him for exploring the stuff around him like a normal kid?!

This other little girl sitting next to us was intent on only sticking the green cellophane paper on her animal cut-out. The 'teacher' went to her and said "no no no. don't just use the green one! here, take the red one and stick it next to the green one. it's nicer like that." Then she proceeds to glue the red cellophane paper on it for her. UGH. Who are you to tell her what is nice and what is not? What happened to freedom to create? This is the dearth of creativity I tell you. Needless to say, I was even more annoyed. But you know what, not my kid. *shrugs* She was also not allowed to stick one on top of another. It had to be next to each other. Like, OK? WTH?

Point of my rant is, is it really so DARN difficult to find other people who have the same beliefs and philosophies as me when it comes to nurturing our children? Not to say that I'm right and they are wrong. But I believe strongly in what I believe in and all I ask for is for others to respect that. I can't make the teacher change how she approaches her playgroup. I can only keep looking, till I find one I'm happy with. Mark my words, one of these days, I will get so fed up with it all and decide to start my own.

I had something else in mind to blog about but it's not coming to me right now with the little one tugging on my arm. Gotta go!