Walking with the Washburns

Jardin or no Jardin - That is the Question!

It is considered incredibly normal and quite frankly was expected that we were going to put both of our children in the Jardin once we started language school. What is a Jardin - well I am glad you asked! A jardin is basically a daycare center for preschool/kindergarten(jardin is Spanish for garden as well). Here it is normal for Peruvian children to go to the Jardin at age two if they are wanting to get into a better gradeschool, however it is obligatory to place your child in the Jardin at age three - at least that is what we have been told. The Jardin is from 8:50-12:30 every day during the week. For most parents this works out wonderfully because they need to work to support their families. However, for us it is a little complicated. First off John starts school at 8:30 and the Jardin does not open until 8:50 so that means I would have to walk with all THREE kids a few blocks to the Jardin - which seems like a few blocks to many unless I grow another arm. There are services to taxi your kids to school but those cost money and that scares me a little bit. Another thing to think about, is that if I did actually get Caleb to the Jardin in the morning I would not actually see him again until 4:30 because I have language classes from 12:10 till 4:30. At this time I would come home cook dinner and by the time I got done with everything I would be lucky to even get 20 minutes with the little guy before he goes to bed at 7. I feel like I am not ready for this. I think to myself, am I just being selfish or is the just not the right timing? John and I would really like for him to speak Spanish, but is this out of prideful ambition of just wanting to be able to say our kid speaks Spanish or does he really need to learn it right now? I mean I absolutely agree he needs to learn Spanish but right now we have a good schedule going and I fear the emotional turmoil (on both his side and mine) we might create might be worse than not sending him to school. At this point we are not sure if he will benefit from only having a few months in the Jardin before we move to Curahuasi. Once we get to Curahuasi we do not plan on sending him to school, for a couple of reasons (1) He is still very young (2) We have not decided whether we are wanting to homeschool or not. Caleb is still very young (3 in May) so really if we were in the States I would not even be considering whether or not to put him in preschool, however we do feel a good amount of cultural pressure to put him in school here. Every week people talk to me about the benefits of putting him in the Jardin, and really the only benefit would be that Caleb would learn Spanish because realisitically I will still not be able to get more homework done. Will 4 months in the Jardin really make a difference if we decide to homeschool them anyway in Curahuasi? Will it really be that important if we come back after three years anyway? Truth be told if we come back after three years he will not really retain any of it anyway although I am sure this will make it easier for him to learn Spanish in the future. Or will we stay here longer than three years? Tough, tough, tough decisions. Please pray for us on how to go about this.

 

We do have DVDs and music that the kids have been listening to and they are learning lots of Spanish words. We also have a sweet girl who comes to our house to watch the kids while John and I are walking to language school. She stays for about two hours and only speaks Spanish to the kids which has also been helpful. We also just started attending church on Thursday nights too in hopes to get Caleb exposed to more Spanish. We visited this particular church for the first time this past Thursday. What an eye opening experience. I imagine this will be a little bit more like the church experience we will have in Curahuasi. They had two kids rooms, one fore preschool and a nursery. The preschool room was a concrete room with ten plastic chairs. They did have a boombox for music and some crayons but that was pretty much the extent of it. The nusery had two small beds, one crib and lots of stuffed animals. Normally you expect to see a child safety gate in the nursery and they had one creatively made out of material easily available to Peruvians. Kids do not need much - just love and care - and that is what they got that night. When we returned to pick up Caleb that night he was so excited that he got to sing songs and color a picture. Who needs fancy toys right?

Pray for our friend who helps us with the kids as she will be going to have surgery next week, sooner than we expected. She will need to have about 3 weeks off after the surgery and we will miss her dearly - ourselves included. She is such a blessing to our family during this time of language learning.
 

 

...The decision on whether or not to homeschool is giving me more gray hair for sure. Any thoughts on this? I have many...