Hancks Year In Denmark: Velkommen til Storegruppe

April 1 marked the first day of the boys starting at the "big group" class for those who are getting ready to move into school in the fall. Storegruppe is for the kids who will be 6 before school starts, and they give them a couple of months of preparations in the spring. In the morning they have class, and in the afternoon they play with the kids in the afterschool SFO program, rather than with the kids in the preschool.

As 6 year olds are prone to, they were a little goofy when Jeff tried to take their picture with the door sign welcoming all the kids to this new class.

Their first task for the day was to create name signs for their places at the table. There is a chart on the wall that shows where each is supposed to sit, and they all put their names appropriately around the tables.

This is the first I've seen Torben with all the letters pointing the right direction...often he was Torden. It's fun when they first start to learn how to write their names. I hope we can take these green signs home with us in their books.

Their friend Rolf came over again this past Monday. It's fun to see how their interactions have changed since the boys have learned Danish. Rolf came over early last fall, when the boys knew how to say "kom nu!" so he just followed them everywhere. Now they can have real conversations, and felt it necessary to play in the pouring rain outside.

Monday night was a potluck dinner with all of the preschool families. We didn't know much about it, except that it was at 5pm and we were supposed to bring food for 4. We got there and discovered that it was the "ceremony" for the kids who were moving out of the preschool into the big class! So we were very glad we went. Here is Torben being goofy for the camera.

They had all the big kids come on stage and the teachers talked a bit about them moving on to the next step in their journey.

Then they called each student by name and gave them their book of stuff they'd put in over the course of their time in the preschool. Most kids had been there for several years, so theirs were quite full. Anders is a prolific artist, so his had a lot of extras as well; Torben's was more minimal. In the fall, they were each asked to bring in pictures of their family, pets, house, and they also filled out some worksheets that talked about things they like to do and where they live and who's in their family, etc. There were also copies of the articles from when the boys were in the newspaper here. So it's a really fun memento of their time this year.

After getting their book from Charlotte, they were supposed to walk through and shake hands with Ane, Christine, and Pia. Anders decided he would "high-5" them with the book instead.

Torben shook Charlotte's hand before receiving his book, and then proceeded to run off the stage, skipping the rest of the teachers.

They really are growing up, though. Now that it's spring, the volleyball net is set up outside the dining room at the folk school, so the boys and a few other kids played out there after dinner.

There were a few pictures on the Facebook page from the school that I thought would be good memories for the boys too -here they are making their name tags for the tables, and having a fun time with their friends.