Mumsnet Little Italy 6

[Rosa]

Ciao , Hello , Welcome .

Sorry, meant to say I'm back, have been since last Saturday but have been caught up in a bit of a whirlwind since so not had time to come on here. I'm now going to skim through and catch up with what's been going on.

well hello there

Hello hello to you too. Hot and humid? It's lovely and breezy here in sunny Monza, maybe you should move from the centre of the metropolis.

I have the meeting for the scuola materna this evening, I'm nervous that they're going to tell me that dd will be in the last intake for inserimento. I'm going to have to dress aggressively in a sharp suit or something.

I'll never leave the centre of the metropolis .

dd starts the inserimento on the 9th. I thought they'd postpone it (as the comune has delayed the start of scuola materna of 1 week) , but they didn't.

ds is starting prima elementare on monday.

How exciting! Does he ahve to wear a grembiule?

we won't know until monday, it's up to the teacher.

how was your holiday?

It was OK. The flat was tiny, the bathroom smelt of damp, there was only one serviceable saucepan and the stove had only 2 flames(high or very high) so we basically lived off pasta for 2 weeks as it was impossible to cook anything else, but hey ho, we paid a pittance and the complex was fine, so who cares. DP has finally realised all by himself that his ds cannot share a room or even a thin walled bilocale with us so the next time he has to come we are going for something with 2 bedrooms and solid walls. Hallelujah! To have "time to ourselves" we had to go out in the car and park in shady corners of the pineta.

The beach was huge and sandy though, so brilliant for DD. Lots of spiaggia libera tooa s it was il parco naturale della Maremma. Lots of rubbish too unfortunately, incivili are everwhere.

Italy seem to breed only incivili... .

Sounds good, children love spiaggie. are you coming to milan? we might meet, maybe after all these inserimenti

I agree with you, even DP has started noticing it more. We went to Siena and the only people throwing rubbish on the ground were Italians, most of the tourists made the effort to get to a bin. Did you watch that programme on Rai3 about vacanze in Italia? It was quite amusing.

I'm going to try to take an afternoon off soon, once I know when the inserimento dates are. It would be good to meet up, maybe with dd even. I'll email you when I have an idea.

I have antipatia towards those who want to salire sull'autubus prima che tu sia sceso.....

I think ds and dd will do only mornings next week. let me know. And I'm of course at that bloody gelmini ministro, who wants to bring back the maestro unico.

Yes, what's that all about? I thought they were all supposed to do inglese e informatica from materna, if there's a maestro unico then how's that going to work? Surely it wpould cost them more to make all teachers do a course in either? Seems strange.

I'll see what I can do next week, it depends on whether one of my clients finally wakes up or not.

I like this idea of a book swap, and bring on the Enid Blyton, I loved them and consider them an essential reading experience for children. I don't care if they're not PC, let's face it, if DD is going to grow up in Brianza then she's hardly likely to ever find out the concept of PC.

Welcome back Brange

Franca my DD was 4 in july, will be starting 2nd year of scuola materna possibly on monday, though they never actually told us when school restarted.

I don't think they do a proper inserimento here, not sure because last year DD started in the scuola materna in the village here. It was utter chaos, no teacher and a total free for all. I stayed for a bit but DS was only 4 months at the time and had him in a baby carrier as there were steps. Anyway, after 3 or so days I decided to move her to the next town, they had been going 2 weeks by the time she started.

Don't have a clue. Basically they want to save money on teachers' salaries, so they eliminate teachers! wtf?

What's a maestro unico?
For a year or the whole 3 years?

Oh that sounds just the ticket to reform the education system

sputnik, she's only 2 months younger than my dd, who refuses to wipe her bottom as well .

they do inserimento with dd because she'll be new to this scuola materna, but they expect to do it in a few days. One of her best friends is there, they hope this will help. She should be all right, hopefully.

sputnik, no I meant the maestro unico at scuola elementare. I don't know they seem to believe that going backwards is the way to go

[pride emoticon] My DD wipes her own bum and has been doing so for ages. I do it when we're at home though, but that's only because I feel I should have control over it.

I think they've said the maestro unico was for the first year of elementare only. That really will save a lot of money then.

So, what books has everyone got? Unfortunately I don't have that many in English as I read a lot of trashy thrillers with little inspiring prose so I just pick them up in whatever language. I do have the odd classic of English lit plus a few more modern pieces but most of the rest is in Italian (both trashy and non).

brange
we have tons of books. In English I have classics as well as thrillers etc plus some granta collections.

Have you got a 1000 Splendid Suns? I've been trying to find it in English but none of the bookshops around here seem to have it. I recently picked up On Chesil Beach 2nd hand at Libraccio if you want it after I've finished with it (I'd started it but got waylaid by the latest Montalbano)

What are granta collections? I feel very ignorant not knowing that.

I don't know that either.
All kinds of books here.

Oh good, not just me then[phew].

Should we just post a wish list on here then whoever's got that book and is willing for it to travel can let us know? Should we have a big book club style meet up somewhere central? Nah, maybe not, I'd need to buy a trunk for the books.