One thing’s for sure…EVERYONE has an
opinion about the different ganim on offer in Israel. We needed places for our
kids as work and ulpan were about to begin and so we began our search. There
are some great Facebook forums for mothers in Israel and one specifically for
the area we live in and so we posted a request for Gan recommendations and
within exactly six minutes, the dedicated mothers of Modiin replied with
various different options as well as their own thoughts about why that
particular gan was so great, followed by counter posts saying why other gamin
were better. We decided that the only way to really know was to set up visits
and see for ourselves.
There were so many options of types
of chilcare to choose from…metapelet (childminder), mishpacton (small playgroup
in someone’s home), maon (government sponsored groups), Gan (nursery). Once we
had decided that we wanted to send the baby to a mishpachton and our three year
old to a Gan, we narrowed down our options and chose suitable places. We
actually sent both kids to English speaking childcare places as we wanted them
to feel comfortable and able to communicate but there are loads of different
options of places to go and definitely plenty of Hebrew speaking places.
Our kids cried for the first month
every day when we left…you might be luckier than we were! It’s hard for both
the parents and the kids (probably more for the parents) but it has settled
down and now both kids are thriving in these Ganim. We were so happy that we
based our decisions on our gut feeling about each place rather than on people’s
opinions as at the end of the day, the parents know their children the best.
