Monday, September 15, 2008

School jam

My Daughter is on her second month of Kindergarten and we've sort of fallen into a routine. She likes it a lot, even though it's really tricky to have her tell us what's really goes on in the classroom. We get a little bit more information if we ask her about her day in English (and not in Swedish which is the language we speak in our house). Then she doesn't have to figure out what "I was the captain of the green team" is in Swedish (I'm not even sure we have ever talked about "lagkapten" or "gröna laget" in Swedish - she just doesn't know how to talk about that in Swedish.

Since she is a "late bird" (going to the class that starts at 11 am), getting her to school is a breeze - the school yard and parking lot is almost empty. But getting her from school - you have to enter into the "school jam". With all the classes in this K-5 school (classes from Kindergarten to Grade 5) is out at the same time , and since most of the kids are picked up by car - this is one crazy time at this little school in the middle of a residential area.

We're lucky - it's a 6 minute walk to school - so if the weather is nice (meaning cool...) we can just walk past the lines of cars. But the days when we've had over 100F (+37C) - even a 6 minute walk for a tired 5 year-old is too long and we've entered the traffic jam... or should I say, minivan parade.

2 comments:

Mia said...

I remember that from when I started nursery school. If we asked him about his day in english, he was happy to tell us, but if we asked in Swedish, he said "Jag vet inte" and that was completely true, he didn't know the words for the nursery activities. Today, though he usually translates everything, so I think it's a developmental thing as well.

Anonymous said...

Så enkelt det kan vara ibland! Jag har full förståelse för att din dotter inte hittar orden på svenska - hon har ju upplevt dom på engelska!!

Själv har jag samma problem, trots att jag är flytande i båda språken. Hjärnan registrerar minnen på ett språk har jag upptäckt - när jag pratar om mina upplevelser på Irland så går jag automatiskt över på engelska och med en irländsk dialekt!!