Vivi's First Days of School

Here's Vivi's account of the last two days, exactly as it was dictated to me:

This is about the first day of school. I was excited and happy and I tried to behave.

The first thing I did - Mom, and me, and Bo and Dad went to Bo's school. Then I took the bus when it came. It was a beautiful bus! I loved it. It was way better than the orange one in the US. It had a picture of little children with backpacks on. So I hopped in the seat, but first I had to wait for the other kids to get off the bus. They were on the bus because they were going to Bohdan's school. We were looking out for Lucas, Bohdan's friend, but he wasn't on the bus. The bus drove really fast. Indeed, I was trying to look for a bird flying in the sky, but the bus went too fast.


When we got to the school, I got my backpack, put it on my back and I went through the gate to the courtyard. Then I went inside a different door (not the one to my schoolroom - but it is part of my school) into the art room, where we learned everyone's names. Our names were written in lowercase, uppercase and in cursive. That was really pretty when it was written in cursive.

After that we discussed the weather. Then we went in our classroom, but we did not sit at our desks yet. There were lots of seats basically circled like a half of a circle and we sat in those. We were trying to memorize something (of course it was not a Bible verse). I'm not quite sure what it was because, of course, it was in French. So I couldn't memorize it that good.

After that we went to our desks and sat down. "Maitresse" (teacher) had to point to which desks we would sit at. I got to sit next to Lucy, my friend. Lucy had another friend, but I like Lucy better. Then I think we did writing. I can't remember. I wrote cursive! My cursive is a little good because Mom taught cursive. Whenever something is really right, Maitress puts a smiley face on my work that I've done. If it is sorta right, she makes a face with a straight mouth.

I don't remember much more, so I'm going talk about lunch now. At lunch Dad, Mom and Bo came to get me. But they didn't actually bring me back home. We ate in the car! We're just silly Americans because the French would never do that.

Then it was recess. We played for about 20 (or 10) minutes. Then we came back in, washed our hands and sat at our desks. I don't remember what we did in the afternoon. Then we went home, hopping on the bus going back to Bohdan's school.

Here's the next day:
The next day we woke up, well, Mom and Dad had to wake us up. Then we got breakfast, got our shoes on, got our backpacks and went to Bohdan's school with the car. We have a Ford. Then when the bus came I hopped on again, chose my seat and rode like a tractor going super fast.

When we got to school we went to the courtyard and played for a little while. Lucy was there before me. I saw all the kids lining up at the door and I got my backpack and we went inside. We hung up our backpacks on the hooks and sat down on benches. They're not made out of wood I don't think. Of course, we did names, only in a different way.

After that we went to our desks and did cursive writing. Then we did numbers. Basically, there would be a number and we would circle objects to match the number. Then we did more numbers, only I got to go up front and hold a ruler about as long as a floor lamp. There were numbers at the top of the chalk board. I took the ruler and pointed at what number was quatre (four). Maitresse said, "tres bien," which means "very good."

Then it was recess. After that she called us in again and we did painting, sorta painting. There was a big piece of paper with red, green, purple and yellow paints. I was red because that's my favorite color. Lucy and her friend were red with me. There was a tiny paint roller and a big one at our table. I used the tiny roller and then a boy asked me if I wanted to switch with him so I got the big one. I tried writing my name in cursive, but I didn't know how to write the second "V" so I only wrote "Vi." But I tried my best.

At the end of the day we got our backpacks and went home.

That's the whole story of the first days of school. I love school and I like my teacher and I love everything!