Yesterday was Colt’s first day of Chinese 1st grade. Here, they have kindergarten, then pre-kindergarten, and most kids are 7 when they start 1st grade. This worked in his favor and gave him extra time to become pretty-much fluent in Chinese over the past almost 2 years! He’s a rock star. . . and I’m his biased mother 
He also started English 2nd grade on Monday. The first morning went smoothly, and I’m so thankful he is easy to teach!
His new school is a Waldorf school. It started 2 years ago here in GL and the education style is 100% different from Chinese traditional education. The days are shorter and there is no homework (as opposed to traditional style 8:30-5:30 with a couple hours of homework)! He has 2 teachers and 7 total in his class (as opposed to 1 teacher and up to 60 students). They have Chinese and math class, then the rest of the day and classes focus on the arts and personal skills (i.e. painting, drawing, music, hand crafts like sewing and woodworking, agriculture, cooking, and hiking).
The first day they welcomed the 1st grade class by a little ceremony representing this “big step up into big school.” It was sweet. The teachers and so kind and have talked to us in depth about Colt’s strengths and weaknesses, personality, etc. to figure out how to best help him learn. They even came to our home for over for 2 hours during the summer to spend time with him and get to know our family. It’s a different learning style indeed!
So far we are thrilled. Colt’s first day was awesome. He came home all smiles and says he loved school so much he wanted to live there ha! Not happening son We are so thankful to have this type of opportunity for him. Traditional local school wasn’t a bad experience at all. He liked it just fine and had lots of friends that he looked forward to seeing every day. . . I just felt like the pressure and homework load would only increase and make adding homeschool too difficult. Didn’t want to crush him, you know?
Oh, did I mention some of the teachers and families are ‘like-minded?’ Pretty awesome. So thankful!!
Excited about school!
This is 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade all together welcoming the 1st grade students.
How exciting and what a neat opportunity for Colt! So glad to hear he’s enjoying school so much and so encouraging to hear about the ‘like-minded’ teachers. What a gift!
Looks like a lot of fun times and learning ahead!