Well, we have been back from Christmas holiday for a few weeks and gotten back into the school groove. Zoe bikes about 2km each way to and from school daily, which gives us all a lovely bit of free exercise for the day. She gets dropped off and picked up in the school courtyard which doubles as the playground and cafeteria during the mid day recess and desayuno. No cafeterias as public school in Spain…. lunch is later at home during siesta time after school lets out at 2.
Zoe seems to be really finding her niche at the Spanish school while Avi is still enjoying homeschool time. He knows he will join her next year and is occasionally apprehensive, but mostly he has fun with me learning. He is impressively moving (slowly) through first grade Singapore math, already on book 2 of Explode the Code grammar/phonics, and adept at writing. He seems to enjoy this the most, so we began first grade Writing with Ease. His reading had gotten quite good, but hit a stumbling block with our first digraphs sh and ch. They are tough!
His most fun, though, is our theme for the week. We have for a couple months been studying animals and choosing one or two a week to really learn about, write about, and color. Now we have moved on to plants in science and with that a focus on native America. He loved this as we mapped out 5 of the primary North American ecosystems and then built model homes to represent the lifestyle of the First Nations who lived there. It was a blast!
His favorite, though, was the igloo! We found a giant balloon and couldn’t pass up the coolness of an avi-sized igloo!! It was a crazy paper mache mess in the attic, but totally worth it, and the cats seem to think it’s their little home as well.
Our plant focus in science has us finding samples at the park for micro-scoping and painting. He had a blast last week with flowers, and this week found tree parts with Bryan. Bryan has been home in the mornings so he is trying his hand at teaching as well. It’s fun.
Both kids and I still take swim classes at the same time, but in different groups, once a week. We are down from two times weekly as we added a new fun activity: musica! Zoe is back at the violin with a wonderful teacher name Isobel, while Avi is loving his music / song / dance/ violin / piano introduction class with other kids. They go to a school called the Amadeus School at the same time and I’m so glad it has worked out well. We bike downtown for the class, which gives us a fun time for a once a week out-to-eat even though nothing is really open for dinner. We visit a café and experiment with Spanish snack food.
