Weekend Busy-ness

In all the "excitement" of back to school, I forgot to mention that we got to see friends Roby and Bernadette last Monday. They live in Guadeloupe, and rarely get to visit France, so we hadn't seen Bernadette in 6 years, and Roby in 11 1/2 years - since we were in Guadeloupe in 2000.

Friday...
We learned the new school set-up. The "maternelles" - 3-year-olds, 4-year-olds, and kindergartener (yes, singular) - will be with Simon, the maître, who has been Benjamin's (and Noah's) teacher up until now.

The CP and CE1 (1st and 2nd grade) will be with Laetitia, the maîtresse, who had the 2nd through 5th graders up until now.

And the CE2, CM1, and CM2 (3rd, 4th, and 5th graders) will have the new teacher. This is her first real class after a couple of years of long-term substitute teaching, so it may be an adjustment for all of them, but Laetitia, who is also the director, thought this would be better for the 5th graders who will be going to middle school next year and will do well to have some adjustments now, before having to make so many more when they get to middle school.

We are pretty happy with this arrangement, though it does seem like it will make 1st grade more of a graduation into "big kids' world," being with the 2nd graders instead of the little ones. Benjamin sort of knows his new teacher already, and we hope the transition will go smoothly for all.

Apparently they aren't "allowed" to give written homework in 1st grade in French school, so that is a relief. We'll see how true that is as the year goes on!

Saturday...
Gymnastics started for Noah. Benjamin preferred to do swimming this year, but started to regret his choice when he was at the gym, watching Noah. And I'm wavering in our "one activity per year" idea...

Our friends from church and their kids came over in the afternoon, and spent the night. It was almost 80° out, so the kids got to play in the pool "one last time" before fall.

Sunday...
We had house church with our friends after breakfast, let the kids ride bikes for a little while, then visited a couple of flea markets in the rain (drastic weather change overnight!), and showed them a few houses for sale in the area in the hopes that they'll buy a country home out our way one of these days.

Cute kids at a rainy flea market! But no one bought them, so we had to bring them home again.