First week of school DONE

Last week and the weekend have been completely crazy with all 3 boys starting their respective schools and extracurricular activities.

Starting with the oldest, Andrei, started at his German public school in 2nd grade. His first day was Monday and there was no special assembly or anything else. In fact, he came home with homework. His daily schedule changes daily but overall he has sport, German, math, art, music, religion/ethic, and science spread through the week. Three days a week classes start at 8:35 and end at 12:20; Monday he starts at 7:45 to 11:20 and Tuesday 8:35 to 1:10. He is signed up for extended day until 3PM where he gets lunch, does his homework, and hopefully makes some friends. We did end up buying Andrei the German school bag because every single kid has it. In math they seem to be repeating what they learned in 1st grade which is not a problem; however, in German the kids are writing cursive words and Andrei didn't learn that last year. I have a meeting with the teacher on Wednesday to meet her and learn more about German school system. Andrei tried soccer last week but really didn't enjoy it (which we didn't think he would but I figured it's worth a try). He is interested in speed skating and I need to figure out the details of that, but for now he does swimming and chess. He is not interested in joining the swim team and we are not pushing since he is really not a competitive type and his current coach seems to be really good.

Ilya had his first day on Monday as well. First grade is a BIG deal here in Germany so his school had a concert for them, Chris and I packed his Schuletute with random miscellaneous snacks and school supplies. They also had sweets and a tour of the school. Ilya's class has 8 kids - 4 boys and 4 girls. Some kids only speak Russian, some only German, one girl knows a little bit of English. In the last week they have started to work on their cursive and a bit of math, but still a decent amount of coloring and learning how the school works. He says the school is difficult but seems to also enjoy the work. Just as an example, though, one of his teachers name is Valentina Viktorovna - we've been trying to learn it and I think he finally got it. So now about 4 more teachers to go :) His classes include English, German, Russian, math, sport, science, music and art. His school also offers chess, theater, dance, puppet theater, and art as extracurricular. They will start this week. As for his sports, he tried gymnastics and soccer last week. He will continue going to soccer and swimming; but in gymnastics he got upgraded to intermediate and that happens at the same time as his art class.

So that's the oldest 2 and I will write about Anton separately (hopefully within next 2 days). I am hoping that with the kids in school I will actually have time to play catch up and write some stuff down.

Lusha's entire school, 2nd grade in front, 1st grade standing right behind them and 4th in the back. Yes, he does seem to be as big as some 4th graders!