Self-portrait

This month, Ingrid started school. In Sweden currently kids normally start school the year they turn six. Ingrid turns six in a month; therefore she now goes to school.

Initially I think Ingrid was a bit disappointed with school. She had expected something radically new, and what she got was not that dissimilar from what she had just left behind.

The first year of school is sort of a preparatory year. It is called nollan, meaning year 0, or förskoleklass (“pre-school class”) or F-klass for short. (Pre-school class should not to be confused with preschool, which is a different thing.) It is part of the school system rather than the child care system, and it has a curriculum, etc.

Those confusingly similar names actually reflect reality quite well: F-class appears to be closer to preschool than to real school, as far as I can see. Especially during the first week or two they mostly spent time getting to know each other, “team building” and “trust building” and other such fluffy stuff. Also the school part only takes place in the morning, and after lunch there is after school care instead.

But now their weekly newsletter actually lists “maths play” once a week and “language play” on other days, and sports once a week. So perhaps their activities will gradually become more school-like.

During their last maths play they counted things and sorted them. Initially I found that a bit silly, but then I reminded myself that those are five- and six-year-olds after all, and of course not every five-year-old has Ingrid’s interests. (One evening this week she asked as to give her some maths tasks, like “how much is 12 plus 12”. She managed not only that but also 51 + 51, and then 52 + 52, and 51 + 11. She’s well past the counting fingers stage.)

When the school term began, her swim school also started up again. It turns out that she can actually swim already: she can do a passable back stroke from one end of the 10-metre pool to the other, without stopping. I don’t think she could do that at the end of the spring term, and she hasn’t been practising during the summer, so I don’t know where that came from. And I don’t think she realized it herself: she didn’t seem to think that swimming on her back counted for real.

She got weighed and measured at school and officially stands at 110.6 cm and 20.4 kg. Her feet were recently measured to be 16.5 and 17.0 cm respectively; that half-centimetre difference has been there for a long time.

Favourite reading material: still Bamse.
Favourite movie: Tom & Jerry. (She has discovered the wonders of YouTube.)
Favourite fruit: plums.
Favourite food: pancakes. Generally she is still a bit picky with her food, but we have now agreed that as long as she eats one vegetable with her dinner, she can otherwise choose freely what she will eat. It isn’t rare for her to eat just the pasta (skipping the sauce) and then one raw bell pepper, or three carrots, or a handful of cherry tomatoes.