by Christine Taylor

Created on: May 07, 2009   Last Updated: May 13, 2009

Pre-school! You have to love it! For around 7 years I spent 4 mornings a week with my class of 2 to 2 and a half year olds, and loved it all. I have to say from the start I didn't think it a great idea to put 2 year old kids into the school system but that's the way they do it here in Paris and I must admit that it gave me a unique set of experiences and memories.

From 8.30 a.m. to 11.30a.m. we painted, glued, sang, danced and laughed together. Over the years the group sizes changed, the first year I had 17 kids total by the end of the year, to more manageable groups of 10 or 12. Every child had something cute, endearing or memorable about them, even when that something memorable was Louis' penchant for bringing his mother's plastic wrapped tampons in to float in the kiddy sized toilets!

There was Margaux; a bundle of laughs, never a tear and always the first one to collapse in giggles over the slightest thing. Gaspard who sang French Rock and Roll songs at the top of his voice while playing air-guitar whenever he thought he had someone's attention. Eleanor who wouldn't answer to her full name but only her nickname Lily.

Tommaso who cleaned. Seriously, we went through a huge quantity of baby wipes that year mostly because at tidy-up time he cleaned every individual Lego brick and tea cup before putting them into their boxes. Come to think of it, he usually cleaned the boxes too!

Sebastian, who had just moved from London and refused point blank to speak a word of French all year, illustrating quite neatly the opinion of most French people that the English don't like to learn foreign languages.

There were the inseparables, Amicie and Jean who might as well have been Siamese twins for all the good it did trying to separate them. Athenais and Olympe, no relation but what a coincidence that best friends have such matching names!

The Sacre Trio, (Margaux J, Margaux T and Gaspard) surprisingly un-jealous unless one was absent then strangely the two who were in school just couldn't manage to play nicely together.

The Twins: Ambre and Zelie, one of whom spoke mostly French and one who spoke mostly English, but sometimes they traded! And Manon and Julie who never played together while they were in school but if one was sick and stayed at home the other moped all day.

A couple of more difficult cases too: Maya who just couldn't connect with anyone, no eye-contact, no language, no idea at all of how to act in a group. She improved greatly

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