On Wednesday, I woke up extra early to spend the morning in a Russian Kindergarten.
I wish I could go to kindergarten every day. Kindergarten rocks. Why does anyone ever leave kindergarten? We should stay in the land of picture books and smiles and gentle voices and sharing and sticky fingers.. and runny noses.. and screaming.. and hair pulling.. and the ever-present, faint smell of saliva mixed with cleaning products.. Uh, so, maybe it’s ok to move on sometimes.
We gave a short presentation on the United States - covering the flag, the name of our president, and the state of Pennsylvania, where Dickinson is located, etc. One girl thought the president of the U.S. was Poroshenko, the president of Ukraine. It was great. She was great. Kids rock. If you need a break from politics, go hang out with little kids. They don't care where you're from or what your political views are. If you smile and bring them cookies, then you're basically pals for life. Children are kind of like puppies in that way.
After that, our new little friends grabbed our hands and led us upstairs to their classroom, where we all sat down - in tiny chairs meant for the five-and-under crowd -to drink tea and eat cookies. That’s right – we drank tea with kindergarteners!!! In cute little teacups! I watched a class of five and six-year-old children drink black tea! Some of them didn’t even add sugar! THAT’S SO CUTE. What kindergartener in America is capable of sitting down to a nice cup of tea???? I’m raising my kids in Russia.
After tea, we indulged in playtime. A little group of girls clung to me and led me to different parts of the room, picking up toys, asking me questions I didn’t understand, showing me their drawings and necklaces, and petting my hair. I got a couple of them to play Russian “Rock, Paper, Scissors” with me, which made me feel pretty great about myself. They showed us their nap room, which was full of actual beds. The beds were numbered for each child and lined up in rows, similar to the opening orphanage scene in the musical, “Annie”, but brighter and friendlier, without the gloominess preceding the show-stopping number, “It’s A Hard Knock Life”. (When I was in fifth grade, I played Grace in my school’s production of Annie. It was a big deal. Just thought you should know.) Anyways, there’s a twin bed with sheets and blankets and a pillow for every single one of the kids. An actual bed – not a mat on the floor!
I would have liked kindergarten a lot more if I had my own towel, my own brush, my own pajamas, and my very own bed, like all these kids. What a wonderful way to introduce children to school. This is the way to do kindergarten, I’m telling ya.
And weird hedges shaped like deer, too?! It just keeps getting better.