“The first day, we started by moving everything …”, says Sandra Rieffel-Thil, director of Jean-Moulin kindergarten. The classroom has been emptied of all of its games. Dinettes, books, toys are now piling up in another corner of the school, closed to children.
There remain the small tables grouped by four but where the toddlers must sit alone. Since March 17, Jean-Moulin d´Uckange kindergarten has been organized as a reception center for the children of caregivers and law enforcement officials. Volunteer teachers already observe strict sanitary rules.
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“Reinventing everything”
“We had to reinvent everything in two days, imagine a hygiene protocol … We had to think of everything,” explains Sandra Rieffel-Thil. The teachers worked hard. Present in rotation, they also provided distance courses for their usual classes, chose to manage the meals themselves to limit the number of adults. With the help of the leaders of the Creuset social center and the city’s maintenance staff, reception was provided seven days a week, for around ten children, throughout the period.
A way, too, for the Municipality of observe the possibilities of implementing the health protocol before the possible reopening of other classes.
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Untenable distances
The hardest part is not to disinfect everything “but to respect the distance”, note the teachers. If the toddlers welcomed seem rather happy to come to school, the teacher always has a few tears to console in the morning, not obvious from a distance and behind a mask (equipment that these teachers have also waited for several weeks).
Since each object touched by children must be disinfected every evening, students have access to only a few pencils and games (magic slates, puzzles, etc.) in limited quantities and in a personal locker.
“We have obviously changed the way we work to imagine activities without contact and without equipment… We need sustained attention to interest small pendants who spend several hours without objects. The children heard a lot of history, taking advantage of the yard for outdoor games as long as the weather was favorable. But the exercise has its limits.
“The little ones need contact, to move, to learn by manipulating … We have the feeling that we are meeting these needs,” says a teacher. And to be able to scrupulously respect the sanitary measures, the nursery class welcomed only groups of five children, maximum, per teacher.
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