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The nursery and kindergarten started the new
academic year with a big number of children, split in three groups
having an average of 22 children in each group. It is a great
opportunity and challenge for us to have a mixture of Romanian, Rroma
and Hungarian culture where our children are coming from.
 We find it very
difficult to work with the youngest children which would come to the
nursery for the first time and speak their own language, although we
teach only in Romanian. It would take months for children to
understand the language and start learning actually what they are
taught.
Having about 50% Romanian and 50% between Gypsy
and Hungarian children in each class is helping us to develop more and
more the integration process. It is lovely to see how children, no
matter what their cultural background, all learning together the same
basic skills, all playing together and sharing things. Spending time
together all helps the Gypsy children to learn and develop their
Romanian much easier. One of the Romanian little girls wants so much
to be able to communicate
 and
play with her gypsy friends that she even tried to learn words in
Gypsy language so as she could take some of them at her home after the
nursery programme is finished.
We wanted to have parents involved in the
nursery and kindergarten’s life, so we held two parents meetings, the
first in September and one in October where we tried to emphasise the
importance of their support in their children’s education and how much
it means for us if they encourage children to have good attendance.
Our teachers who teach the two older groups were
very pleased when they had the opportunity last week to talk about
what the children want to become when they grow up, because some dream
to become teachers, doctors, chauffeurs, cooks, firemen and policemen.
We do believe that our role is to encourage them to believe that one
day they can become whatever they want if they work hard enough. |
