Terence's School Work

As parents I think we are always trying to predict what our kids will end up doing with their lives, how they will make decisions and, of course, how they will do in school (and eventually their profession). At 7 years old and only in 2nd grade I cannot tell which direction Terence, our oldest child, will go with school. He is right now completely on the fence and can either turn out to be an excellent student or a student who barely passes through school. Of course I hope he (as well as our 2 daughters) will excel but let's face it: school is not for everyone. The best sign so far that we have that he will do okay is that he loves to go through his school work with us, with family, with just about anyone. He loves to explain the exercises in his work books and how he did with each of them.

He insisted that we bring ALL his books back to the US so he can share them with Nana and Papa (Curt's parents) but we could only manage to fit about half of them into our suitcase without going completely over the airline's weight limit. Here he is with them in Kansas going through some of his books.



Sometimes he doesn't even notice if who ever he is with is not paying much attention as he is always fully engrossed and examining each page carefully.

3 Great Quotes

Last night at bed time, the kids were all picking out the book(s) that they wanted to have read. Ali picked one up, took a long look at the cover, turned to me and asked, 'Mama, this book in French?' Her English still needs some work and is a bit choppy but it's getting really good. At first I thought she said something different as I didn't think that she even knew what French was or that we had different books in different languages at home. I looked at the book and the weirder part was that it was in French. How on earth did she know that?

Last week I was cutting Mia's finger nails. She tried to keep me from cutting them and when I finally cut off her long claws (as we call them when they get too long), she looked down and asked, "Why did you cut all of them off short? Now how am I going to pick my nose?"

Terence's quote today was about a marble. After examining a big bag of marbles (these are the popular toy that they bring into school and play with on the playground) that he just bought at the store with his own money, he noticed one was just a half a marble. The other half was simply missing. He commented on how funny this was and how he'd never seen a marble shaped like this. He told me then that it was a Chinese marble and he heard that this is how Chinese marbles were shaped. Where do they get this stuff?

I think these 3 quotes give you a good insight into each of their personalities. They always keep us laughing and on our toes.

Back to School

Yesterday was BACK TO SCHOOL at the French school in Budapest. Terence started in 2nd grade (aka CE1). They assign times for each grade to arrive on the first day of school. The 1st and 2nd grades assembled on the playground at 9am whereas Mia's K class started at 9:30am.

We only found out who Terence's new teacher was upon arrival. There are three 2nd grade classes and he has one of the two female teachers who I've heard is very strict but excellent. This works perfectly for me.

The photo above is the list of the 24 kids in Terence's class with their DOBs and their nationality. Unfortunately, it seems Terence is class is made up of mostly Hungarian kids. I'm only saying 'unfortunately' as I worry that Terence will spend more time speaking in Hungarian than he will French but hopefully the teacher will put a lid on that.

After the head master introduced the teachers, he followed up with each child's name who would be in the teacher's class. The kids went over to the teacher one by one until the entire class was standing with her. Together, the class and parents (if the chose) went to their new classroom. I was only one of about 2 or 3 moms taking pictures.

Here is the hallway chaos (kids hanging up their jumpers) and the classroom. There was no assigned seating on the first day and to my disappointment, Terence chose the very last row. I'm sure that will change. He's sitting next to his buddy, Trevor, who also speaks English and Hungarian.

Here is Mia's new classroom. This is her 3rd year now at the French school and the first year she didn't cry. She was so happy and has a lot of her friends in her class. In Kindergarten and all the Pre-K classes they split the class in half so half started Tues, the other half on Thursday (they all have today, Wed, off) and then combined on Friday. I think this is a little less overwhelming for the students, teachers and parents.

"Okay Mom, you can go now"

Washing Stage

Why does every kid seem to go through that 'washing' stage? I remember Terence did it, then Mia and now Ali seems to want to 'wash' everything!

Often she's into washing cups and dishes (she's broken a couple so now we have to be careful to only let her do the plastic ones). She also likes to wash the tables and chairs and yesterday I found her under a heap of bubbles while she was scrubbing her little plastic motorbike like crazy. She gets a look of determination on her face and she just scrubs and scrubs and scrubs away.