I realize that I haven't written a post about how school has been going, and it's only because there's so much to say. I thought I'd start by sharing a little bit of what a typical day at Christliche Schule Kandern looks like!
7:45 I get a ride to school with two of the other English speaking elementary teachers, so that we have time to get ready, prepare for the day, and get some coffee. :) The elementary campus is located in the town of Wollbach (Voll-bock) which is about a ten minute drive away.
8:30 Twice a week on Mondays and Wednesdays we have staff prayer time, where a teacher leads a devotion, we share prayer requests, and pray for our students. It's so wonderful to pray together as we begin our day.
9:00 The schule (school) bus drops off the kids picked up in Kandern, and everyone meets at the front of the school. We line up by class, our principals say the announcements, we sing to the birthday children in either English or German (they get to choose!), pray for our day, and head off to our classrooms.
9:00-9:15 We have our circle time every morning, and it's the time when we practice saying the date in both English and German, talk about the weather, and pray for our day. I love this part of our day, because both Hanna and I are there, and we have the opportunity to start our day off all together.
9:20-10:25 Mother tongue! This is when we split up, and I take the native English speakers and Hanna takes the native German speakers and we do language development (reading, writing, grammar, etc).
10:25-10:40 Recess!
10:40-11:00 We have snack time in our classrooms, and read to our kids. I have been reading most days, because Hanna teaches math right afterwards and it gives her some additional time to prepare. I love that our school sets aside time for this, because I LOVE reading to my kids! Today I read them the Miss Nelson books, and when we got to the third one, they could not, for the life of them, figure out how Miss Nelson and Viola Swamp were in different places at the same time (Miss Nelson is Viola Swamp in the other two books). It was so fun when we got to the last page and discovered that Miss Nelson had a twin.
11:00-11:45 Hanna teaches math in German. According to German law, math must be taught in German. It's difficult for the English speaking students, but they're definitely learning.
11:50-12:25 PE or Art
12:25-12:40 Recess!
12:40-1:00 We all eat lunch together in our classroom.
1:00-1:20 Silent reading time
1:20-1:50 Partner language! This is when we split up again, and I take the native German speakers while Hanna takes the native English speakers for language development.
1:50-2:20 Science or Social Studies or music, depending on the day.
2:20-2:35 Recess!
2:35-3:30 Science, Bible, Social Studies, Library, or Choir, depending on the day.
3:30-3:40 Clean up
3:45 Time to go home!
So that's a little peek into our day. Pictures are coming soon!
