Back to School

Jayce---age 10

Tate---age 9

Jaylin---age 6

Gage---age 5

Shaylee---age 2

We returned from our summer travels just in time to go school supply shopping and get the kids ready for their first day of school.  If you remember from last year's experience, we learned the very important cultural lesson that kids don't bring bags or books or supplies on the first day...of course...but only flowers for the teachers.  So, we packed up the backpacks and left them all at home, but instead of taking flowers, the kids all preferred to take cookies to their teachers.  They figured that they themselves would much rather have cookies than flowers, and assumed that their teachers would too!

Jaylin joined the older boys at their school this year, entering the first grade, while Gage has one more year at the preschool, enrolled in the kindergarten class.  So far so good in the schools for us.  Jaylin loves her teacher, who will be her teacher for the first four years of primary school.  She is slowly getting to know the girls in her class, and likes to tell us who her friend was that day at the end of each day.  Jayce and Tate are quite used to their teacher and their classmates, as they too are together with this group for the first four years of school.  Next year they will be in the 5th grade, and will change to a new class of kids and a new teacher.  This practice has been a great benefit for our kids, as it has helped them to feel more at home in this public school, where they are learning completely in the Slovak language.  Shaylee is still wishing that she too could go to school, and often wears her backpack while the other kids head off to school, just waiting to be whisked away and to have her own teacher.  Someday, Shaylee...someday!