Kindergarten Wald Woche

Bench full of car seats left to their own devices!

I didn’t have too much time to dwell on Noah’s last day at the krippe though as it was Wald Woche (Forest Week) for the Kindergarten group which included me, and true to Austrian form (as I’ve come to know it) everything was sorted at the last minute or left on a ‘play it by ear’ basis and we had 20 kids to fahrt to the forest at 8 o’clock in the morning every day for a whole week!  Parents chipped in with lifts and there was a lot of kinder seat swapping going on and shoving kids in wherever there was a spare seatbelt even if it was too big for them and it covered their faces!  (This type of thing would NEVER happen in the UK or Oz and English Emma and me were once again shaking our heads and laughing at the madness of it all!)  It’s very common here to see children sitting in the front seats, and even babies in their capsules, which apparently is ok as long as the air bag function is switched off.  Not something we’re used to seeing so a bit confronting.  Anyway by some miracle or another all children and teachers made it to the meeting spot in the forest, and after leaving a big pile of kids seats on a random bench in preparation for the fahrt back (really?  Is it ok to leave them there?  Kids car seats are expensive you know!), we proceeded into the forest for a picnic by a stream.  There didn’t seem to be any system or order and some kids sat and ate their picnic and others wandered off into the water with their clothes and shoes on and when I tried to find out what should be happening nobody seemed to know anything and if they did they didn’t tell me.  Something I’ve gotten used to but I soon became busy as I quickly found out that my job was the ‘Toilet in the Wild’ assistant for all three year olds needing numbers ones and twos, a first for me but nothing like being thrown in at the deep end! 

Flying Fox area

Milly testing her balance

We carried on trekking after the snack to the Flying Fox.  Some kids were playing on it, some were venturing around looking for blueberries, some were running around like cave men threatening each other with sticks (not talking twigs here, more like mini branches and some were a bit too pointy for my liking!) and then one of the teachers decided to count the children.  We’d only been there for an hour, seemed like a good time to do an initial head count!  I counted 23, someone else counted 24 and someone else counted 25.  Bit hard when they’re all running around like God knows what.  So how many are we meant to have?  No-one knew.  So we could have lost a couple of kids and no-one would have been wise to it.  Imagine the scenario when we returned to kindergarten for lunch.  Where’s Jonny?  Don’t know, did he even turn up this morning?  Did anyone fahrt Jonny to the forest? (Only it wouldn’t have been Jonny, it would have been Johannes, or Reinholdt).  After that one of the teachers actually wandered up to the area where the bunch of boys were playing Hunger Games, and discovered that there was a steep drop down into the river.  Don’t play there anymore then, even though you’ve been playing there for half hour anyway!  Perhaps the immediate environment should have been checked a bit earlier.  Mental note for next time.  Oh wait a minute, we don’t do mental notes! 

Building pebble towers with friend and Emma

(Sorry if it sounds a bit critical, it’s just that the difference between how things are dealt with here in contrast to home with regards to working with children is so vast that I’ve struggled to feel comfortable with a lot of things!  For example, the tree in the school garden that stands right next to a wooden fence, the kind of fence that has spikey wooden bits sticking up and no-one but me thinks it’s dangerous for the kids to climb it.  Taking the group out for an excursion to the playground or similar, walking through town and crossing big roads busy with trucks, without the parents knowing, never mind getting permission slips signed.  Taking the group to a parents house for a pool party, on the bus, again crossing busy roads. This was organized but half the kids couldn’t swim.  The ski instructor sharing one cup of orange punch between her whole group of coughing and sneezing kids.  The public footpath running right through a school’s playground.  No forms to fill out allowing an appointed person to collect a child from care.  A little girls aunty collected her one day, I had no clue who she was, never seen her before, neither had the other teachers, and the little girl looked a little confused, but no-one thought it was a big deal except me.  Not the end of the world, but wouldn’t be allowed at home from a teachers/child carers point of view.  Guess it’s just what you get used to.  But a lot of the time I found myself stressing about safety and cringing at things!  On the flip side life is much more simple.  A lot less paperwork.  A lot less thinking about do’s and don’t’s, you just do, and deal with the consequences if there are any (and then pass the buck! ;-))

Picking blueberries

That’s all beside the point.  The kids had a brilliant week running amok in the woods.  It was tiring but interesting and nice to be out of the classroom.  And at least I learned a thing or two about surviving in the wild, like carving a little man out of a piece of wood with my pocket knife; discovering there are thousands of blueberries in the woods so I’d never go hungry; and wiping children’s bottoms and working out how to cover up the evidence.  One time I covered it up with some massive leaves, surrounded it with big stones and laid two sticks across the top as a warning  ‘do not step here!!’  It looked more like a burial.  Which in a way I suppose it was.  Bear Grylls would have been proud.