Inserimento

For the past three weeks we have been busy with the so called ‘inserimento’, the process to insert a new child in a childcare class. According to this well-tested process, at the beginning parent and child are together in the classroom, and then, day after day, the time in which the parent is present in the classroom progressively diminishes, while the time in which the child is by him or herself in the classroom progressively increases.

At the beginning there were no major problems. On the contrary, it was interesting to observe from a corner in the classroom how your child familiarizes himself with the new environment. But after a while, when the time in which the parents had to wait outside the classroom had significantly increased, it became quite boring to have to wait one-hour/one-hour-and-half outside the classroom, always on the alert, before being called again.

To kill the time the teachers gave us a task: we had to decorate the cover of our children’s notebook - the notebook in which all the pictures and works that our children will carry-out during the year will be collected. We were sent to the childcare workshop, and, armored with scissors, tape and glue, and using all the materials we wanted - coloured papers, paperboard, fabrics, seeds, woods, leaves, buttons, and anything else we could think about - we started our homework.

And have to say it has been great fun: most of us (myself included) have not done anything similar since our times at the primary school, and - in a way - it was as being back children again.

And, to my own surprise, we had plenty of talent and creativity!