UNA NÍ GHÁIRBHITH is leaving it up to her husband, John McDonald, to settle their youngest child, five-year-old Ultan, into school next Monday.
It is not that she won't be there but, as principal of Mol an Óige in Ennistymon, Co Clare, she will be busy welcoming the other 77 pupils into the school.
Although the multidenominational Steiner school opened three years ago, it is only being recognised by the Department of Education as a national school from this September. It is the first of two Steiner schools to get such recognition, the other being Raheen Wood Steiner School in east Clare.
It means they are now entitled to grants and to have their teachers' salaries paid, so parents will no longer have to pay a weekly fee.
"We will be implementing the primary curriculum but using the Steiner model," explains Ní Gháirbhith, whose other child, Aisling, is going into the school's third class.
"There will be a huge emphasis on aural learning and informal learning."
There is a much greater focus on outside activities too, with "hands-on" education about nature and the environment.
Unlike other junior infants, Ultan and his classmates do not have a book list yet. "We start more formal work in senior infants," says his mother.
Steiner schools organise a rhythmic day for the young pupils, going between indoors and outdoors, songs, rhymes and drama. At lunchtime they put all the tables together and sit around as if they are having a family meal.
"We make the school as homely as possible. It's a learning situation in a home environment. Teachers are not so much of the classic standing up at a blackboard kind."
As a teacher with many years' experience of the conventional primary school system too, Ní Gháirbhith's advice to parents of new junior infants everywhere is to be happy and confident in handing your child over to the teacher.
"If a parent is worried or concerned, the child will sense it."
She also stresses the importance of being on time to collect your child for a secure, smooth transition back out of the teacher's care. "When they pack up and walk out, the ideal is that they see the person collecting them. If there is a gap, there can be nervousness."