Last working day

---

Oh its sooo hard....yet another day of sunshine and blue skies. Luxury of not having to be on duty as it were until 9.30am. Myself Sarah and Carol were collected by our host Sylvi and strode out on a 20min walk to see a local Kindergarten. Spent some time looking at the classrooms and talking to the teachers. Found many similarities with our own system. Although children don't start a formal education until 7 the state actually heavily supports childcare in these kindergartens at a cost of 25 of your British pounds a month. No wonder parents are falling over themselves to get there children in. AND they have teachers working with each age group from 1 year old to 6 who have qualified teacher status. Their aim is to have children reading, writing and able to count by the time they go to school at 6 years old. So no real difference which the English system apart from they don't suffer from the baggage created by national testing and league tables!! So they have time to teach children more basic life skills. WOW.
The rest of the group went to talk to a teacher trainer specialising in music (mainly for the benefit of Reece. Stop him from crying in his beer every night because he hadn't seen music yet). We all noticed he was a lot happier after he came back and could not stop talking about some sort of hand jivin' thing called the Estonian method to show the pitch of notes.
In the afternoon we had a meeting with Sylvi to feedback our findings from the week. Ended up in another 2 hour professional discussion about the philosophy of education. Better than it sounds.
Finished about 4.30pm and we all had a late lunch and went our own way. Chris pulled Reece up the highest point in Tallinn so that he could get him to the top admit to vertigo and get Reece to describe the view while Chris stood with his eyes shut. Myself and Tony visited the museum of architecture. Now Sarah T went for a run...yes a run. Actually brought running gear with her (lycra shorts, MP3 player and head band...full works). Ran round the old town smiling at tourists and being propositioned by the older Estonian males. Everyone else sat like sane people drank coffee and ate cake.

---

Photos

At the kindergarten
Gary and Sarah on a visit.

Jigsaw
Sarah helps one of the youngsters at the kindergarten do a jigsaw.

Meeting
Our final evaluation meeting.

Marmite
One of the presents we gave Sylvi was Marmite as it is a local product. She was intrigued.

Group photo
Final photo with Sylvi in the middle. Lovely lady and an excellent host.