Sophie started school officially, five mornings week, at Radford House on 11 January 2010 when she was nearly 4 years old. It was also Xander and Lebo's first day of grade 1. She was woken early by Xander, and both children practised violin before school on all three days of the first week. Uniform is no longer compulsory for the preschool, but Sophie chose to wear it anyway on the first day. Her grade 000 class consists of 6 boys and 2 girls. The other girl is over a year younger than Sophie so probably won't be in her class next year. For the first few days, Sophie said she only played with Michael, whom she already knew as he is Xander's best friend's little brother, but after a while she also played with Aiden from her class and Cathryn from the year above. Teacher Lee reported on the third day that she was especially good at colouring in, and she received two stickers for good behaviour that day.
Sophie's first day as a "visitor" at Radford House was 3 June 2009, when she was 3 years old. She was able to go for a full day (from 8am to 12:30), unlike the initial plan, because her speech therapist was at a conference. Sophie was woken up at about 6am and was amazed it was still dark. She dressed, had breakfast, had a short violin practice, and was very proud to put have her own crocodile bag with its own lunchbox, waterbottle, woolly hat, gloves and sunhat in it, just like Xander. She said "see you later alligator" to Gogo, and Mummy drove the children to school in the Pajero.
At school, she was welcomed by Keyra and her mom, waiting in her classroom in her crocodile bag until Teacher Jenny arrived. Sophie gave her Teacher Jenny a big hug and was quite happy to join the other children on the carpet for Afrikaans.
She enjoyed her day at school and coped very well, according to the teachers. She had Afrikaans and singing, as well as doing "work", ate all her lunch, and played war with Gregory and Keano (who are Xander's age) and Alexander. She did want to stay on the swing when break ended, but Alexander persuaded her inside. Jenny started the assessment for Sophie's suitability for Radford. Sophie's comment on this is that she did shapes: circle and triangle but not semi-circle!"
She visited again another two days in June, and coped admirably, especially considering that the second day she and Xander ended up having to go to aftercare until 2pm because I was driving to Pretoria to try to sort out Finnian's UK visa.
