Summer part 1

Ms. Susan's birthday

This summer we had a wonderful teacher, Susan Nylin, from the United States come to work with our girls on reading and writing English.  Our girls have been in the Italian public Schools for 2 years now. Their first year was in the preschool/kindergarden. Macy and Liberty's second year was in the 1st grade at the elementary school. First grade here starts the year your child turns 6. Macy is a year behind for her age. We wanted her first year to be in the smaller school with her sisters learning Italian. 

Last year at the Italian school was full of learning for the two older girls...they went from writing block letters to writing in cursive, doing basic addition and subtraction, making friends and learning and understanding many new words in Italian. Macy and Liberty both had their ups and downs being in an Italian school but they did great!  We are so proud of them.

Josh and I wanted this summer to get the kids evaluated to see where they would line up with kids in the States with education and what was expected from their grade.  With living in Italy and not totally understand the school system or curriculum it has been difficult to know if they are at par.  

Titus and Susan

We are very thankful for Susan and her willingness to spend almost 7 weeks of her summer teaching and loving on our children.  She left Sicily 5 days before she had to be back at her teaching job in the States.  Susan spent an hour to an hour and half with each one of the girls.  3 to 5 hours every morning were spent teaching. Every week day my girls would look forward to spending their time with Ms. Susan.  She did an amazing job with each of them.  She left me a lot of material so that we can continue to give them activities to do that will help them improve. 

Saying good-bye at the airport

While Ms. Susan was here we also did Family Adventure Saturday.  We wanted the chance to show her the island of Sicily.  We were able to travel to Agrigento, Syracuse, Aci Castello, Aciareale, Catania, Mount Etna, Taormina and Cavagande.  We very much enjoyed our time in each one of these place.  Click on the link to see more about each place.  I will do another post on the different locations once I download our pictures from the camera.

The girls really miss Ms. Susan.  They learned so much from her.  Good-byes are hard but we know we will see her again next time we are at Waypoint Church in Omaha!