One of the more exciting and wonderful things to have happened this year was Aralyn starting school. In Germany, starting school is regarded as a big milestone for a child, and there are some really sweet traditions to mark the occasion.
One thing that I particularly liked was the welcome ceremony, conducted on the weekend before the first day of school. All the pupils' families were invited, and in front of the crowd the principal individually welcomed each student to the school. The children also got to see their classrooms and meet their teachers, and there were some productions put on by the older children for the throng. It just felt really good to see everyone so excited about their children starting school, to see such an enthusiasm for education.
Having a child start school also gave me an almost tangible feeling of community. A number of our neighbors and friends gave Aralyn little packets of sweets or presents to mark the event. There is just something very solid and good and right about traditions like this, honoring the importance of learning.
On Monday, the very first day, Aralyn and I walked down the street to school together. Aralyn was carrying her Schultüte, a cone shaped basket carrying school supplies, sweets and other little things that Brienna had bought for her. You can see it in the picture below taken on her first day of school.
Overall, her first half-year at the Jenaplan school has been excellent. She has made some great friends, the teachers are loving, attentive and amazingly organized, the classrooms and facilities are virtually brand new, and there are even two Australian lizards as class fauna. The class has also gone on lots of field trips and excursions, and being Germans, they've also gone on some fairly long walks and get lots of exercise, at least in good weather.
The only frustrating thing about the Jenaplan system so far is that I am not sure that the mentoring system works exactly as it is supposed. The older children are meant to mentor the younger children and help them with their mathematics. However, I get the sense that if I hadn't regularly focused Aralyn on completing a section of her maths book a day, as well as explaining and going over the techniques, that she wouldn't have progressed nearly as far as she has. On the other hand, this could also just be her dreaminess, a trait she inherited from her father.
We got there in the end, and Aralyn has just finished her first maths book, shown below for posterity. And fundamentally, something must be going right - Aralyn was very proud to have finished the first one, and super excited seeing me pick up the next workbook.
We have also spent a lot of time at home focusing on reading English, as Aralyn's instruction at school is in German, and uses the learning-to-read by writing method. Even though Aralyn loves stories and has an amazingly vivid and rich creative world, she initially balked at reading. Basically, we just had to keep at it, day-after-day, working through the different learn-to-read series that we'd purchased before we moved from the States.
Given that Aralyn has finished all 64 pages of Green Eggs and Ham, it feels like we've made solid progress. And of course, Dr Seuss is a genius, his books being full of surreal whimsy. There's nothing better than sitting on a couch with your kids, laughing together at the craziness in a book, and hopefully, getting them excited to read another one.
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