A New School Year

After a short summer of only 6 weeks, all 3 kids are back in school.  Myra is in 2nd Class, Lexi is in 0 Class and Noah is still at the "Learn Danish Preschool."  School is quite different here.  First of all, they start a year later than in the states.  So, this is like Lexi's "Kindergarten" year.  She was so excited to start.  She was really ready last year, so it's been very exciting for her to start.  Both girls go to Herstedvester Skole.  It's kind of difficult to explain how the school works, I don't know that I really understand it all.  But, they are in a building called Lærkelen.  This building houses one class each of 0 to 3rd class.  It's a large school, so their are other classes with kids these ages.  But, once they start school here, they stay with the same class all through elementary school, which I think goes to 6th grade. So Myra is back with all her friends from last year.  And Lexi will stay with the same class for however long she goes to school here.  The schooling here really puts a big focus on social interaction and development and as they get older, they work more on intellectual development.  I often find myself comparing it to how the schooling was in the US.  Myra was reading in Kindergarten, but here, there are still some kids in her class that can't read and in Lexi's class, many of the kids don't even know the alphabet yet.  But, they do a lot of fun activities, field trips, arts and crafts, etc.  They have a fun playground space, with trees to climb, a little pond to catch frogs in, tree swings, bridges, fire pits, etc.  All of the things that would certainly not be allowed in the US for fear of lawsuit.  But they have so much fun here.  I am certain it will be difficult for them to go back to the rigidity of school in the US.  It's just so different.  Not that either is right or wrong, they are just different.  Noah is with his same class from last year, with a couple of new kids and some of the older kids moving on.  The kids in his class vary in age from 3 to 5.  They don't do any class work, but learn the language through play, reading and different activities.  Every week they go on a different field trip, to different places like the library, a castle, the aquarium, the beach.  It's very fun for him.  He struggles a little because he doesn't know a lot of Danish yet.  He's starting to understand more, but rarely speaks it.  I think this will be a good year for him in there though.  He'll learn a lot.
Anyway, I hope this will be a great year for all 3 of the kids.