Choosing a preschool

One of the things we were most excited for when we found out we were coming here was enrolling Wilson in a Japanese preschool or yochien. The preschools here all have their 6 week summer break starting mid-July and going through August. We decided to look around at schools now and start him when the kids come back from break on September 3rd. We've looked at 3 yochiens and the one we chose we think will be pretty great.

In Sasebo, it seems there are 2 different kinds of preschools you can choose from. Both are for kids from ages 3-6, and both are centered around play. One is more of a daycare with a little structure, but mostly just playing and crafts. The daycare ones have the option of sending kids on your own schedule, so 3 days a week, half days or whatever we wanted. The other options were called kindergartens and were more of a classroom setting. The kids are separated by age into different classrooms, they wear uniforms and have structured curriculum and more activities, like swimming, gymnastics and English (ha!). In these kindergartens, kids go from 9 am - 2 pm on Monday through Friday. Both of the options offered Japanese lunches, teachers spoke in Japanese and most of the kids were Japanese, which were the main things we wanted in the experience for Wilson.

The first yochien came recommended to us from some Japanese neighbors who were enlisted to help us learn more about our neighborhood. The base offers a "Know your cho (neighborhood)" program that hooks up Americans who have moved off base to Japanese neighborhoods with volunteers who speak English. They can do all kinds of things for you like introduce you to neighbors, show you where the best local shopping is, tell you how to use all the control panels in your house (seems silly, but super confusing!!) or whatever else you may have questions about. So, we wrote in that we'd like to visit a few preschools for Wilson.  The Japanese volunteers that showed up were lovely. It was a woman and her daughter-in-law. First we sat down and they told me a little about how Japanese preschool works and then they took me to the school where they had sent all their children.

The school was pretty great. It was the more structured kindergarten style. When I told Nathan about it I described it as the happy factory. The pros of this first school were that it was a really upbeat and loving place, the kids were bouncing up and down in whatever activity they were doing - one classroom was doing yoga, one classroom had different fruits on their heads in an Indian poker style and were describing and guessing them, and one class was going crazy in the gym. The teachers were all super friendly and they whisked Wilson and Leo away to join in everything they were doing. Some other minor perks were adorable uniforms, 5 minute drive from our house, there was a bus option that could pick Wilson up, it was also small - only 3 classrooms, one per age group. They also offered the extra classes, like swimming once a week. The major downside of this school was that none of the teachers spoke English. The Japanese ladies that brought me there did a great job of translating and explaining everything about the school, but we were a little worried about communicating with Wilson's teachers for everyday things, like just asking how he was doing. Prying information out of him would probably not give us a good picture of how he was doing at school. Also, things like what to bring to school and any change in schedule or pretty much communicating anything would be hard for us. I was pretty bummed when we left because it was such an awesome school with so many pros that if we would have been able to communicate at all we would've probably chosen it.

Before my Japanese guides left, they told me about a sister school to the one we visited. It is about 15 minutes from our house and is very similar. One perk is that the owner speaks English there and all the teachers understand English - yay! So, Nathan had July 4th off and we decided to visit it. It was pretty similar to the first one, except a lot bigger. There were 3 classrooms per age group and the pool and gym were in the same building. There are also a few kids from the base that go there in each age group, and we talked to a few of their parents who said they loved the school. One woman told us her daughter was fluent in Japanese in 3 months! The owner told us that Wilson can speak English and the teacher will answer him in Japanese, and that this has been a really easy way for kids to transition and pick up the language. We got to visit a few classrooms during craft time and lunch and also got to see some of the swimming lessons. We left that school feeling really great about it.

That same day, we also decided to visit a daycare style school that came recommended by a few of Nathan's coworkers. It was really nice. There was a teacher there who spoke English and she showed us some of the crafts they've done recently and the cute playground outside. It definitely had a much more laid back feeling than the other 2 schools we visited, but it seemed really great.

So, if you've made it through this much of the post (which Nathan tells me is much too long - sorry!), you'll probably guess we chose the 2nd school that we saw. We can really see it being a great place for Wilson. I can't say that I haven't had a few moments where I question whether we need to put him in this year, but we hope that he'll thrive there and Leo will certainly love the one-on-one time. Wilson really is excited to go to school. We haven't broken the news that their won't be any bus riding involved, which is probably the part that he talks about most at this point.

I didn't get any pictures on our visit, but here is a link to the school. It's mostly in Japanese, but if you click around there are some pictures of the kids and some of the stuff they do.

http://www.kurokami-kurinomi.com/index.html

Here is the page with a bunch of pictures.

http://www.kurokami-kurinomi.com/p-4/p-4-1.html