Dagis - Is the 3rd time the charm?

Checking out the place before any kids start for the year

I have written past articles about our/my struggle to find an appropriate daycare/dagis/forskola for Calvin.  No place was good enough, clean enough, friendly enough, [insert your own values] enough for me to consider placing him there.  I even thought that child-friendly Sweden would be a cake-walk to find the right fit, but alas, the perfect dagis remained out of reach. I had to tell our first Swedish dagis
that they weren't right for us (and they really weren't right for his age).

So when we moved in July, I visited Calvin's (potentially new) school with a few reservations.  We were welcomed in and took a tour of the facility.  It was HUGE!  It had a great indoor space (good for winter) and it's own playground in the back.  Beyond the fence was a public playground and across the street was a walkway into the forest.  We were told that the kids go on outdoor outings in the Fall every Wednesday and spend all day exploring the forest.  So far, so good.

Calvin and I did the four days of inskolning/intake and I got to see how his day would look following the dagis schedule:

• Drop off at 9am at the outdoor playground
• Play outside from 9-10:30am
• Snack at 10:30am
• Continued play outside
• Lunch at 11:00am inside (up a steep flight of spiral stairs)
• Nap 11:30am-whenever the kids wake up
• Play inside from wake up time to 2:15pm
• Snack at 2:30pm
• Play outside 2:45-pick up
• Pick up at 3pm

During the inskolning, I tried to hang back a lot and see how the teachers were interacting with Calvin. The last school, they ignored him and I played with him all day (FAIL!) But at this school, Oliver, the teacher assigned to Calvin, would hang around him but not overcrowd him.  He wanted Calvin to come to him on his own and not pressure him or freak him out.  So far, so good.

Calvin is a finicky eater and really prefers fruits to everything else.  At this school, they serve salad first and let the kids have as much as they want of salad and veggies before starting on the main course.  The main course varied from normal (chicken and rice) to foreign/Swedish (fish balls and spinach).  Regardless of how foreign the food was, Calvin wasn't having anything with meat.  He ignored the fish, chicken, meatballs, everything.  We did discover that he likes cubed cucumbers so that was a win.

Is he contemplating why he won't eat lunch?

One of the teachers saw that Calvin would eat if he was sitting
on her lap, so up he went!

Snack time resulted in another discovery.  Calvin scarfed down liver pate on a piece of freshly baked bread.  Now, the bread was delicious (I had two slices), so I originally thought that the scrumptious bread hid the pate enough so that he didn't even know he was eating it.  To my surprise, he ate the liver pate on its own as well.  Eureka!  Google tells me that liver pate is high in fats and proteins.  Everything a little-boy-who-doesn't-eat-meat needs!  

Pear at snack time. Demolished!

So, Calvin doesn't eat lunch at school, which is worrisome, but I'm hoping that with time he will get used to it and his palate will expand to these new and interesting foods.  Not eating lunch means that he is SUPER HUUUNGRY at snack time so he scarfs down whatever they put in front of him.

Most impressive was that these teachers are accommodating for his younger age.  While the other kids have cutlery and an open cup, they realized that he was too young and Calvin is only given a spoon and a sippy cup.  Rather than telling me he is too young to go to school (like the other school had said), they are giving him what he needs.  They even asked me if he needs two naps, instead of one, during the day.  What?!?  I mean, he does, but I was under the impression that your kid had to adjust to their schedule and not the other way around.

Checking out the water table

The big water table was too tall for Calvin,
so they made a smaller one for the shorter kids

The teachers are really nice and they send out a weekly newsletter.  Since we don't speak Swedish, they even translated the email into an English blurb below.  The lengths to which they are going to make us feel included are really impressive and we are really happy with them.

he's ready to get dirty 

Snack time! 

Calvin, holding court with the ladies

Trucks + sand = fun

Calvin and Oliver

Sleeping with his teddy 

For the record, she grabbed his hand. Cute but back off! :-)

I just want to get dirty!

Calvin is a happy guy because he can get dirty and eat all of the blueberries he wants during their forest walks.  He is the center of attention and all of the ladies at school LOVE him.  They think he is so cute and they pat his head and crowd him a bit.  I can tell he just wants to be left alone to play with the trucks in the sand, but he'll have to let them know in his own way.  He has no problems shoving me whenever I'm in his way, so I know he can communicate what he wants clearly.  Stay away from my boy ladies!

Because my work is mostly done at night (5pm-9pm), I don't need much time during the day to work on things. Calvin will go to school two days a week from 9am-3pm.  We haven't been able to have a real schedule since we moved here so I am hoping that a regular routine will set in and we can really get into a groove.