Axel and Maja Aagren-Eriksson celebrated on Dec. 14 with ABBA tunes and many new friends as their five-month adventure in Bexley drew to a close.

Over winter break, the two students, who have been attending Cassingham Elementary this semester, head back home with their parents to Sweden.

They arrived at Cassingham on the first day of school with limited English language skills, as their father, Peter Eriksson, began a semester as a visiting professor in the History Department at Ohio State University.

Their mother, Kristina Aagren, said that Maja, a fourth-grader, was just starting to do English at her school back home last year.

“But it was very basic, just one hour each week after lunch, just a few words,” she said.

First-grader Axel had had very little exposure to English. In Bexley, each was enrolled in a regular classroom — Maja in Mrs. Bell’s fourth grade and Axel in Ms. Siddiq’s first grade class — while also attending sessions with the school district’s English as a New Language (ENL) teachers in their classroom at Bexley Middle School.

At first, Agren said, the transition was a little rough, particularly for Maja.

“She’s a very communicative child back home, and she couldn’t use one of her main skills,” she said. “And she’s older and did not want to have me around at school to help.”

The children’s mother said that the ENL classroom with specialist Tiffany Meyer and Sherry Coutant was a good “escape place” for them initially.

“Keeping up with all the new language was exhausting and they often needed to take a break,” she added. “Now, Maja’s gotten really involved in school.”

Aagren praised the Bexley Schools atmosphere, saying her children had had “excellent teachers and a very good experience at the school.” Both Axel and Maja hope to keep up with their Cassingham friends when they return home to Uppsala, a university city just north of Stockholm. And their mother has promised that they can travel back to Columbus.

“We’ll probably be here in a year or two,” she said.

On Dec. 14, the two were the center of attention at a lunchtime pizza party in Bexley’s ENL classroom, with students of all ages.

“I’m looking forward to home, my home,” exclaimed Maja. The two Sweden students leave Bexley today (Dec. 22), and will spend two weeks on a family vacation in Mexico before returning to Uppsala.

The children said that they hope to Skype with their Cassingham classmates when they get back.

Aagren thinks that they will easily keep up with their new language skills by viewing widely available programs with English subtitles and translations.

“We have a lot of English usage,” she said.