The Graduate

No, there are no mortarboards here for us. No future in plastics, either, or awkward run-ins with Anne Bancroft. It's just that it seems we kind of graduated in a sense when the Pink Elephant Montessori center closed and we were forced to check out another place.

Wow! The Pink Elephant was nice and fun and all, but if you want to try out the Montessori principles for real, the Summit (Vershina) is the place to go! I obviously say this with limited experience of the Montessori system, so we may still be on the low end of rigorous application, but I really like this new place (and our teacher, Galya) for its more serious attention to some of the basics of Montessori and -- probably even more importantly -- the reasons why these principles are seen as important, what abilities they can hope to help a child develop. Not that the Pink Elephant won't always occupy a special place in our memory, and it probably was a great way for both me and Anya (and Dan) to ease into this preschool thing. But I can see that it is worth paying attention to some of the details of the Montessori system rather than just letting the kid bypass them and simply play, like we tended to do at the P.E.

We've attended Vershina now for about 3 weeks, twice a week instead of the single weekly class we were attending at the first place. On our first visit I was quickly given a rundown of the Montessori fundamentals: the main rule, "porabotal - uberi," or "when you're done playing ('working,' in Montessori parlance), put it away"; the fact that we work on a defined area, a little mat; the idea that the kid should be allowed to take the lead in deciding what activity to work on; and the idea that the adults provide some basic rules within which that freedom can be expressed. She also gave me a sense of why we're meant to do these things, what qualities this system is meant to inspire in the kid if she's able to follow it for a while, including independence and self-discipline, responsibility, self-confidence, and self-reliance or the lack of reliance on outside praise to understand that you've done something well.

Well, OK, it isn't all going to happen in the couple of months we have left at Vershina, but it sounded good to me as a general set of principles, and I can see now that we are going regularly how some of these things really could come from engaging in these activities within this kind of structure. Needless to say, now that I see some people who are a bit more dedicated, to varying degrees, to this system, it makes me curious to know more about what might be motivating Russians to explore the Montessori system, especially what parents might see in it in the post-Soviet era. But I'm afraid I won't have the time to do the interviews that I fantasize about doing to get to the bottom of that one before we leave Vlad. (I'd love to find a place like this in Dushanbe, but I don't expect it, given what we know about the options available there.)

Vershina is actually a small local chain of schools, so we are just going to the location that's most convenient to us, slightly further away than the Elephant was (unfortunately through a couple of messy intersections that can get clogged up in the afternoon, when we're headed there, so making it to class on time and not excessively early can be a challenge). This place is also a little groundfloor apartment just converted into a preschool space, but bigger than the P.E. was, and actually in slightly shabbier condition (which is to say not that shabby really, since Pink E. had just opened in September 2007 and was kind of impressive in its tidiness and the newness of its elements). Our teacher, Galya, seems to know a lot more about Montessori and child development than the very sweet class leaders at the Elephant did, and I really like her style of working with both the small and the big students in the classes, how she chooses to step in and help or give advice.

How does Anya like the new preschool ("sadik")? She seems to like it pretty well: she still has a great deal of enthusiasm for the toys and playing activities, although she's not thrilled at the need to follow new and firmer rules. After a few weeks of this school, she's doing much better with putting away one toy before switching over to a new activity, even doing it on her own without prompting a few times. But she's still not on board with stopping all play and sitting in a circle to listen to a story and say goodbye to all her peers at the end of class. So far we are still taking the option of not playing but instead sitting as quietly as we can in a place where we don't disturb the story and then returning with reluctance to the circle to say goodbye. Galya assures me that Anya is not alone in this transition difficulty and that I'm handling it fine, so hopefully we'll get the hang of it soon.

Beyond Vershina

Some of the success in the rules may be due to trying to apply them at home too, especially the putting things away rule. Here I don't do the whole "porabotal, uberi" thing, but I did realize that Anya is probably old enough now to be invited to help put her toys and stuffed animals away when a particular play time is over and we are moving on from one space to another, whether for bedtime, mealtime, or going outside. For some reason that didn't really occur to me much until we started coloring with crayons and I set up a little coloring station kind of area at the dining room table (in an attempt to delineate a clear coloring territory that was far away from temptingly blank walls or other surfaces). There, it just seemed natural to put the crayons away in their container before we leave, and we're trying to introduce the principle of tidying up and putting things away elsewhere around the house and yard, including at the sandbox and at the bathtub.

We had a busy couple of weeks a while back, going to the playground a bunch and going to a children's concert at the Philharmonic (the Ugly Duckling: we got about 2/3 of the way through before we started getting ugly ourselves, and repaired to the cafe downstairs for a snack and a drink with our friends, Vika and her daughter Arina). Then it rained for a while, and sadik was our main activity. Now pretty much the whole household has a cold, so even sadik is off limits if we want to stay within the bounds of respectability and not infect anyone. We did have a weekend full of behaving well at meals, two as guests in other people's homes, and once at a good old brunch out on the patio at VMI. And there have been lots of chances lately for Anya to expand her food repertoire and eat pretty much what the big people eat, from our trip to Shkotovskii raion to our friends' houses this weekend, to sampling homemade yogurt with homemade granola, and homemade kid's-version pizza, here at home. She's definitely growing into that strong personality she has been displaying for a while, but she is still a good kid and enjoying all the things we're able to show her here in Vlad.

What we're saying

Still very fond of the preposition-noun combinations, like "soxonn," "shirtoff," "shoozonn," "jakkettonn," etc. Also noticing some other good directional words like "unner neaf" (underneath).

Two funny language items from the recent past:
When it started to get warm here, in April/May, I started to realize that I think I was mistaken when I thought "isseee" meant icy or cold. Anya was continuing to point out the window and say this word, despite my assurances that it wasn't very cold out anymore. It struck me as funny that perhaps only in Russia could a parent go 4 or 5 months mistaking a kid's version of "outside" for "icy." And only in Russia could the concepts have been conflated as they may have been in Anya's mind!

The other one was just a moment the other day when we were descending the stairs, Anya in slippers, and (as usual these days) clutching her favorite bear, and me not wearing anything on my feet. Anya remarked "ssippah - Anya - Mommy" and I said, "that's right, Mommy isn't wearing any slippers, she's just got bare feet." Anya took a sideways glance at her bear and chuckled at the idea that my feet were somehow like his.