About two months after that New Year's Eve..

The snow had long since stopped falling, and the flowers had begun to bloom gradually, the trees were no longer as shabby as before. The weather is starting to warm up.

One fine day, Yuri brought a stack of notebooks to class, and asked someone to bring some more pens. She clapped her hands to draw attention to her:

"Children, you'll be in first grade in a few months. You have to learn to read and write now. I want you to pay close attention. Come on, kids."

She set each of them a table to write on easily. And she gave each of them a notebook.

Kiyo put his hands on the table and sighed.

Do I have to learn to write too? I've known how to read.. He thought to himself.

As if reading Kiyo's mind, Yuri said:

"If you know how to read, that's fine, but that's not the end. If you can write our own language, it will be very helpful for you later on."

"But we know how to read them all." - One of them interjected.

"That's right, everyone knows that." - The other boy chimed in.

Yuri was surprised, since when do they know how to read? Seeing that, she just smiled:

"Then how about practicing writing first? The reading part should be left for this afternoon. How about Kiyo going to hand out pens to you?"

Kiyo reluctantly obeyed and handed out the pencils one by one.

"About that part of holding the pen, remember to hold it with your right hand. Look, Tomoyo, it's right."

That Tomoyo girl hastily took it in her right hand.

She continued:

"It's not like that. Just hold it with your index finger, thumb, and middle finger, but hold it firmly. Kiyo, sit up straight."

Yuri went to see each of them, to see if anyone was sitting in the wrong position or holding the pen incorrectly, then they needed to correct it. When she was done, she went to the podium and started taking out the alphabet.

"Today, you will practice writing letters one by one. If you notice, there are already dots on the notebook with that letter, you will write on it. You would write without them later."

She walked next to her kids, shaping each of them to write correctly, until they got used to it. Noticing that Kiyo seemed to have misspelled it, she took his hand and bent it for him. For some reason, this makes Kiyo.. a bit embarrassed? Because she was closer now, and her warm hand was on his bud. Although he wanted to tell her not to stand so close to Kiyo, he ignored it.

It was his first time practicing writing the first words on such pages..

* * *

The morning's task had been done, now it had only to practice reading in the afternoon.

In fact, there are picture books in the classroom that the children often read every day, so they all know how to read and recognize the words.

However, knowing how to read like that is good, but they still have to know how to spell and pronounce correctly.

Yuri brought a stack of books and shared one with each person. The problem was, there were still children who didn't know when it was lesson time, still turning around, talking and teasing each other.

Yuri clapped her palms and said loudly:

"Children! It's time for the lesson, sit up straight and orderly!"

But they still wouldn't listen, even though she repeated it three times.

No more repeating, she had to knock the wooden ruler on the table once, making everyone silent.

"On the children's desks are spelling, pronunciation and reading books, or so-called primers. It will be very important for your future learning. Now open the book."

"Miss, do I need to read the first page?" A child held it up for her to see.

Yuri looked at it and said:

"No, that's just an introduction, you don't need to read it."

Kiyo sees vivid images that go hand in hand with vocabulary and pronunciation. So you read:

"Sunshin."

Yuri, having a very good ear, corrected him:

"No, it's the sunshine."

"Su...shine?"

Yuri read the word sunshine again and spelled it out for Kiyo to follow.

The boy was silent for a moment, but then he spelled it out and read:

"Sunshine."

"That's right." - Yuri smiled.

She went around to see how the children were doing, if there was anything wrong, she would fix it.

Fortunately, there are only ten children in the class, so it is easier to control, and they are not too naughty, so the job of babysitting these children will not be so hard that an extra nanny is needed.

Yuri hoped that, alone herself would help the children learn to read and write basic language before entering the first grade.