Kindergarten. Same but different.

Kindergarten photos have come a long way since the 1970s when I was wearing funky skivvies and a brown pinafore with yellow mary-janes.

Some things are a little different.

Immy attends a creche Kindergarten, which means parents can pick and choose the days and times that suit them best to attend. As Immy is in three days she has three kindergarten class photos, no group exactly the same as the other.

The photographer also has a wonderful digital camera and computers to assist them to photoshop what they want out of them (or add to them).  But I know they didn't photoshop these. Immy's crazy hair is exactly what it always looks like.

This close up even shows food she didn't wash off from whatever lunch was served that day - which is a difference I love, reche kindergartens serve up cooked meals each day and I don't have to pack her lunch!

I can also tell that the photographer grabbed images of Immy every day she was in Kinder for that week because her outfits are different.

On one day she wore a skivvy that is nearly identical to the one I wore myself in 1979. I wish I could find that photo.

The bikes are not much different and the kids still fight over who gets to have the next turn. There are the double ones where you can dink your friend beside you, which is still my favourite.

There are still climbing frames and wooden planks to walk across or slide down.

Crayons and paints and textas and pastels and pencils, glue and sticky tape and endless bits of art hang on drying racks and then get sent home to parents who place it on fridges and walls and books and photo albums.

There are dress up corners with things donated by parents and businesses who no longer need them - like phones that my children do not know how to use because there is no screen to swipe.  There is the home corner, the paint easel, the play dough spot and the reading corner. The group time mat and blocks of many shapes and sizes.

Kindergarten is a magical place for children.

Always has been.

Hopefully, always will be.

The policies and the technology changes, the families come and go but that freedom to play and learn, to be messy and imaginative, to paint trees and visit fire stations, to master the skills of using peddles and walking on a plank, it remains the same.

Our Kinder is a modern hip happening place where they celebrate everyone and every festival, they have celebrated the Hindu colour festival, the Japanese doll festival, they do Greek Easter and currently they are learning about aboriginal art and stories. They made dumplings for Chinese new year (from scratch, no idea how they managed that) and then chocolate balls for mothers day. They learn songs about saving water and how to say hello and goodbye in the language of every child in the class.

There is much learning to be done in the kinder playgound, but regardless of what happens,  Mums know that a skivvy never changes, it's still a good layering option for winter, cheap, easy to wash and will never need ironing.

What's happening at your kindergarten?