peace elementary update

Now that we have two full months of experience I am in a much better spot with the local school experience.  The learning curve was steep and the first weeks were tough (for me more than for them!) but now we are in a groove and the girls ROCK! 

I know they are my daughters so I impress easily but y'all.... they are impressive!!!  So thankful for the many ways God is smoothing this path for my girls! 

Big news from the past month at school? 

First up....  The uniforms arrived!  This was such a big deal and the first graders were thrilled to finally be in uniform like the rest of the older students.  Every student (1st through 9th grade) every day... in uniform.  No wonder the first graders were eager to get theirs! 

This is definitely a neighborhood school and there is a degree of pride that comes with wearing the uniform.  In the mornings children of all sizes ... streaming towards the school  (2000 kids!).  It's pretty neat. 

The winter uniform is basically a sweat suit.  The summer uniform (they don't have these yet) is lightweight cotton pants and a short sleeve three button polo shirt, same basic design and logo. 

Yesterday was the all-school sports contest and I took the boys to the opening ceremony.

It's hard to capture the scale of this event with a phone camera.  Every grade, every class marching on the playing field.  Hello organized chaos! 

Lydia held the sign for her class as they marched.

Each class does a short little performance for the principal and other lead staff members.  See Julianna in the second row?  It's pretty easy to locate my children when they are the only two blond heads on the school grounds :) 

And, I'm sure it goes without saying that the boys were captivated.  The loudspeakers, the marching, the gobs of children.... it all added up to a pretty stimulating event! (Here they are watching a third grade class, in costume, march after their performance.)  After a while I let Luke out of the stroller and he was like a mini-celebrity.  Picture groups of 7th grade girls squealing at his cute little white-blond-curls self strutting around on the side of the running track.  It was awesome. 



The fun continued today with running races and various contests.  But it's a weekend now and we aren't doing homework tonight.  yay! 

The homework load continues to rain down.

These are Julianna's homework assignments for the weekend.  She is supposed to copy it off the board into her homework notebook.  Sometimes we cheat and I take a picture of the chalk board with my phone :)  But 9 times out of 10 Julianna insists on copying it all herself.  She's a bit driven.  Neither Matt nor I can figure out where that came from. 

I'm guessing this will take several hours to complete.  I tell you what though, they are learning, a lot, quickly.  The math work continues to be a nice 'easy' part of their day (we are a year ahead in home school math compared to what they are doing at local school, which gives them a nice little step up).  But the reading, writing, memory work is challenging.

But it's not all work - they each have good friends in their classes (At the sports day I met the mom of Lydia's seatmate .... a little girl named He Zu Yi who Lydia talks about constantly!)  The girls talk animatedly and excitedly about the things they do at school, and seem to really enjoy being there!  So so grateful!