An entertaining 45 minutes at kindy, By Tracey Vale

I spent some time with my son at kindergarten this morning. I'm always struck by the glaring differences between boys and girls at this age. The 'in' colour for girls is pink, purple or both, while the boys wear a much broader range of green, blue, red and orange.

Their play is also a glaring point of difference. The boys generally travel in packs and are more boisterous and active than the girls. The girls are more studious and spend longer on painting or at the making table. They will also choose the 'home corner', crafts or dress-ups over the boys prevalence for construction activities. Of course, there are always exceptions--my son, for example, prefers to play quietly rather than travel in a pack as he wants to choose rather than follow--I'm just painting a picture of what is obvious in a quick glance-around in any kindy.

This morning, I spent some time with him at the making table. He now has two cork guys with wool hair in a little box, plus a cellophane/biscuit tray/patty pan creation to bring home, as do a couple of other kids at that table. I'm sure their parents will be thrilled....

Once outside, he produced an impressionist painting of splats and splodges, as if his life depended on it and he was way behind schedule for that planned exhibition. At the same time, the girl next to him painted a large pink flower, with neatly swirled petals and a long, pink stem.  The girl opposite, painted a pink, happy face with long, purple hair, with the obligatory flick-up at the ends.

At this point, a girl came up to me with a piece of wood. "Look! I wrote my name on this!" I said "Wow!" and studied it for what was becoming an uncomfortable time and, unfortunately, had to ask her what her name was. She said "Jemma" and I said "Oh yes--with a 'J'", pointing to her letter 'J', to reassure her that it was indeed legible. She had written the whole name back to front and with backwards letters! Mirror image!

A pretend bus was set up outside on the lawn and the bus driver, a boy (what else?), said to another boy as he got on, "Hello, Mr. Connor. Where would you like to go?" Another boy called out from the window of a nearby cubby house "Bus tickets for sale! Bus tickets for sale!"

A short distance into their imaginary bus trip, the bus driver stopped the bus and stated to his almost full load of passengers "I feel sad. I need coffee." At which point, he disembarked and purchased his coffee, leaving a bewildered bunch of passengers wondering if they could step up to the driver's seat. Soon after the bus driver's somewhat unprofessional behaviour, the bus ticket office was transformed into a McDonald's franchise, with the new owner proclaiming "McDonald's is open!"