Wasn’t last week simply a wonderful time to be in Shanghai? I trust you had a lovely week. Golden Week was exactly that; the weather (let’s brush over Friday and the rain) was perfect and the colours of the landscape became more autumnal in their hues. Just lovely. The National Day break provided team bilingual a splendid opportunity to catch up with family and friends, travel, relax and recharge batteries after a busy start to the term. I spent the week wallowing in family and friends, taking opportunity to wander around Puxi, eat fabulous food (Shanghai really is foodie heaven!) and sit in my favourite park watching the local Shanghainese residents play mah-jong, badminton, dance and chat together. You don’t need much more in life, simple pleasures really are life’s treasures.
Friends of Hiba I was absolutely delighted to welcome so many parents to the coffee morning on Tuesday. As this was the first gathering of interested parties, I was a little apprehensive that people may not have shown up, that they may have had other priorities. How wrong I was; to see the number of parents who came to find out more was heartening indeed. It is crucial to a nursery or a school to be able to not only grow their pupils but also to grow their families and the educational and cultural community to which they belong. For me personally, it signifies that as a nursery, we have matured sufficiently to be able to take the next steps in our collective evolution. It means that we have come far – far enough now to be able to hand over responsibility to parents to lead on responsive and reflective growth of the Hiba Nursery community. Every parent at the nursery is a member of Friends of Hiba and can offer their support as and when they wish. Some parents will be more heavily involved than others and may join the committees that will be formed in the first wave of development. There is no prerequisite commitment quota – this is something to get involved with when parents choose to do so. The most responsibility falls to positions of the executive committee ensuring that the actions of Friends of Hiba reflect who we are, how we are and why we do what we do. All interested parties are asked to identify their preferred position by Friday 19th October in writing to Vanessa and Yuki – in English or Chinese (Yuki will help me, as ever!)
The Hiba Weekly – first impressions????
It is said that first impressions are important. Whilst a book should not be judged by its cover, many people are unlikely to read it if the cover is uninviting. The Hiba Weekly (I know we had considered the Hiba Daily, however common sense prevailed over my desire to have the title rhyme) is designed to provide Hiba Nursery parents with ideas for supporting their children’s learning outside of the nursery. Within the pages, there is ample information for parents and families to be able to consider what is going on in the nursery and put it in to the context of their own lives and family situations. We don’t want to tell you every single movement and action of the children throughout the week – what would be the point? Firstly, we would then spend all our time writing rather than doing. Secondly, it is not our job to stress parents out by providing the minutest details of life at nursery. Rather, and much more importantly, we provide an overview of the key messages for you to make your own. I hope you find the content useful and have tried some of the suggestions that the teaching teams have made. I wanted the design of the Hiba Weekly to be akin to a newspaper, so that parents and families could skip to the part they were most interested in or browse from cover to cover. I hope you like it – I would welcome feedback should you have any.
What’s in a photograph?
What do you see? Three children and a ladder – not much to comment on really. Or is there? Take another look through the eyes of an early years teacher and see:
