Here’s another post about school. It’s new and different for us so there’s a lot to share right now.
Yesterday Haley came home and said that Wednesdays are her favorite day. Her classes change every day (see below for her schedule) but Wednesday happens to have a lot of good subjects all in a row. Haley says she can understand most of what is happening in science, math (where they are doing the work she did a year ago) and of course in English. She’s lost in music for some reason and the other classes are so far befuddling as well. She said there was a lot of praying today in Agriculture. We wondered if perhaps she was not in Agriculture at that moment.
Last fall when the girls went to school we used the strategy of sending them with homeschool work to keep them busy when they are not participating in class. For Haley we can start to see which days (Thursday!) are best to do her own work but for Zoe it does not seem like she’ll be doing any homeschooling outside of home. She seems to participate in most of the classwork, including alphabetizing (Spanish words!) and doing math. And praying too. You’d think we are in some private religious school but nope! No separation of church and state in Panama.
Although Zoe’s age would put her in 3rd grade here in Panama, I pushed for her to be in 4th knowing that her prior schooling would probably put her at a 4th grade level. Indeed they are doing multiplication and division which is right about where we left off with homeschooling. Funny thing… they multiply and divide sideways. We were taught to stack our numbers on top of each other and do the multiplying that way, but here they do it sideways. I had to take Zoe’s homework across the street to my neighbor who tutors in algebra and she showed me how to do it sideways. Zoe is not pleased that she has to learn multi-digit multiplication not one but two ways!
Tomorrow is day 5 of the new school year and Zoe has no school tomorrow. We aren’t sure why but we do appreciate the note, signed by the teacher, that says there is no school. That is a much better system than showing up at 7am to find no one there! So far Haley has no such day off. “No es bueno” she says.
