We signed Benjamin up for preschool

on Thursday. He'll start in September. We discovered that there are about 39 students in preschool through 5th grade in the THREE villages that group together for school. Preschool through 1st grade ("CP") are in another village, and 2nd through 5th (CE1 through CM2) are in our village. Both schools one-room schoolhouse type formats, I believe, which is how we know we live in the middle of nowhere. (But we love it and wouldn't go back to the Parisian suburbs unless it became totally unavoidable!) We're probably quite fortunate to still have "local" schools at all. Junior high and high school are in the "big town" 7 km (a little over 4 miles) from our village.

View of the village on our way there - behind the fields.

This building is marked "Mairie" (city hall) and "Ecole Communale" (town school), but is now only city hall. This is where we signed Benjamin up. There is a small chicken farm just behind city hall!

This is the village church, and the city hall secretary told us the school was just next to it, so it is likely the building whose roof you see just at the right, but we aren't sure yet. I'll post pictures of the school when we know for sure which building it is.

On the way home we passed the "school bus" that Benjamin could take if we decide to let him. I'm not a fan of this type of bus and he's so little! so we will see.

And this is the road home! I love our countryside and our forest!

We still need to go and talk to the director, show him Benjamin's vaccination records, let him know Benjamin will be picking up more French in the first couple of months because we speak primarily English with him at home, let him know our Thanksgiving plans (that we plan to take B out of school for 3-4 weeks, hope the director doesn't freak out over that!), and find out whether we can send him just for half-days. School hours are 9 am - 12 pm and then 2 - 5 pm, and that just seems so long to me for a not-even-four-year-old!