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November 22nd, 2008
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Walking through life's ABCs

Prague-based preschool takes on a new approach

By Brooke Edge
For The Prague Post
November 14th, 2007 issue

Jan Přerovský/THE PRAGUE POST
Abacus Adventures is about having fun.
Jan Přerovský/THE PRAGUE POST
Jan Přerovský/THE PRAGUE POST
Jan Přerovský/THE PRAGUE POST
Young students bundle up for some outdoor playtime.
Jan Přerovský/THE PRAGUE POST
Diane Birney and Michele Leschová pose with their students at Abacus Adventures.
Jan Přerovský/THE PRAGUE POST
The preschool opened its doors for the first time this fall.
Abacus Adventures

Romana Blahníka 804
Prague 5
Tel.: 777 926 404; 777 925 404
E-mail: info@abacusadventures.cz
Web: www.abacusadventures.cz
Tuition: 2,400–13,500 Kč

The dreary weather of autumn has started rolling in but walking through the doors of Abacus Adventures — one of latest new preschools to hit the Prague market this year — is a nice Technicolor distraction to the world outside. Children and adults alike are playing, singing the “ABCs” and smiling.
With so many different schools to choose from these days, the founders of Abacus Adventures, Michele Leschová and Diane Birney, knew they had to do something to make themselves stand out. And so, in addition to the usual array of games and learning curriculum, kids enrolled here can partake in activities not normally on the pre-Kindergarten roster: ceramics and yoga, to name a few.
“It’s more fun for the children than just sitting at desks,” says Leschová, who moved to Prague from the United States 13 years ago. “It’s really about giving them the attention they need and making [education] fun for them.”
Leschová and Birney, a native of Ireland, found a ceramics teacher to come into the school and teach the children, then finishing their work in an off-site kiln.
“She shows them an idea,” Leschová said of the ceramics teacher’s lessons, “but then they use their own imaginations to create.”
A youth-oriented yoga teacher will also soon be added to the list of visiting teachers, beginning sessions with the students to “bring some calm,” Birney says.
“I think it’s important to do something healthy with the children that they think is fun,” Birney says. Hence the frequent walks in a nearby forest, playtime with exercise balls to help with posture, and trips to a nearby Sokol, the Czech version of a YMCA. Leschová and Birney are also organizing an after-school swimming program that will start in January. Enrollment sits at just two students right now, but four more are set to start at the beginning of the year.
Only two months into their venture, Leschová and Birney say they are satisfied with the gradual growth of Abacus Adventures. After advertising in area newspapers and posting flyers in the surrounding Zbraslav neighborhood, “we’ve been really happy with the response,” Leschová says. Word of mouth among parents, she adds, is starting to catch on.
In addition to the daily preschool classes, Abacus Adventures also offers one-hour English lessons for young children and after-school English lessons for older kids. And, beginning this month, Abacus Adventures will start holding “mommy lessons,” combining baby-sitting and English lessons during the day for stay-at-home mothers.
Birney and Leschová call their working partnership “perfect fit.“ Birney had taught preschool in Prague for eight years, including at the U.S. Embassy school. She met Leschová, who had a background in business, when she worked as a nanny for Leschová’s two children. While in that post, Birney and Leschová learned that each had considered founding a preschool in Prague.
Once leaving the corporate workplace full time after becoming a mother, Leschová found she missed being out in the community everyday, but she also relished being with children. Combining those two in a preschool seemed an obvious fit. Plus, Leschová says, the Prague area had a need to be met in early childhood education.
“There’s a lot of demand for kids from the age of 3 to learn English,” she explains. This age is key for language comprehension, Birney points out, adding that little kids are “just like sponges.”
According to the Institute for Information on Education, preschools in Prague numbered 303 for the 2006–07 school year. That amount has been falling slowly but steadily in recent years, down from 351 in the 2000–01 school year.
In doing field research during the early stages of Abacus Adventures, Leschová found that, while the private preschool market is “definitely growing,” she found “a shortage” of English-language schools.
Jana Labutová enrolled her daughter, Klára, in Abacus Adventures’ inaugural class this fall. The school’s English-based education was what sold her on the new institution.
“We think that if our little Klára speaks English, her future life [will be] easier for her,” Labutová says.
Birney designed Abacus Adventures’ education plan based on what she’d experienced and learned from working at other preschools and individual research.
“During the years I got a mixture of what I thought was good, and good for the children,” through work at different schools, she says. The end result is a preschool with emphasis on creativity, physical activity and learning in “themes,” subjects that vocabulary, games and art can be shaped around. Some of Birney’s themes for this year include colors, numbers, seasons and vegetables.
“I chose to do a theme every two weeks,” Birney says. It’s a length she’s found that isn’t so short that information is rushed, and also not so long that children get bored.
Labutová, for one, has been impressed with the results so far.
“We are absolutely happy about Abacus,” she says. “After not even two months, Klara is singing counting songs, and she is very happy to go every morning — [which] I can’t say about my son when he was this age. So I can say only the best about this school.”

Brooke Edge can be reached at specialsection@praguepost.com


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