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More on kids ...

I wrote this about 2 weeks ago but never published it.

School is going ok but it's definitely been a little bit of a challenge to make sure that everything that needs to get done gets done.

Anton is doing ok-ish in school - it's hard for him to sit nicely, some numbers and letters are harder than others (let's just say writing number 8 almost killed Chris :)).  He has occupational and speech therapy at school.  For now we also have him in local swimming classes as well as local soccer club, both of which meet once a week.  Part of him going to those 2 activities are to get him physically active, but part is to keep him involved with kids in our neighbourhood since he goes to school elsewhere.

Ilya is slowly finding his rhythm of coming home early, having lunch and getting his homework done.  He has the most extracurricular activities but most of them were chosen by him and he loves.  He  does art class once a week, Cub Scouts once a week and soccer twice a week.  He also started Russian class once a week via Skype for him and loved it.  He really enjoys his activities but they do mean that he has to be pretty organized as he was finishing his German homework at 9:20PM one day last week.  Unfortunately, Anton's swimming is on the same night as Ilya's cub scouts so we are still trying to make it all work.

Andrei has Boy Scouts and once a week he has a cooking club at school.  Andrei is still adjusting to 1) more independence in his school work but also 2) more requirements in his school work.  For example, every 2 weeks he will have dictation in his German class so he has to learn how to study for that without teacher specifically saying "memorize line 1-4 today and lines 5-8 the following day."   He also has math test on Wednesday, geography test on Thursday, dictation test on Friday, German test on Monday, and English test on Tuesday.  Honestly, it feels a little bit like too much but I guess that's what 5th class is like.  Can't wait for higher grades ... NOT.  Andrei will also start Russian via Skype once a week.

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