School report: Week 1

I am so proud of our kids!  This first full week of German school has been long and sometimes tough but they are doing great.  In fact most every day after school this week, the report has been "good" according to each of them:  both seem to be understanding and speaking more, and have made a few friends.

On Monday each kid came home with a heavy backpack full of text books!  

Julia has 9 subjects, each with at least one book.  (The "Berliner Platz 1" book in the back is the one we bought for German as a foreign language.  There is no way Julia or Benjamin can make sense of the "Deutsch" classes, at least at this point...  Imagine throwing a non-English speaker into 8th grade English.) 

Benjamin has 7 subjects, including Latin!   

Both kids have "Ethics", where they learn about questions of morality and choice, and (I think) the basic elements of major world religions.  This is the only place where the kids' classes are split up -- normally the kids stay with their own class all day, but have different teachers for different subjects.  This is the one case where the 3 or 4 classes of each grade, however, are split into different sections: German schools teach religion, and you need to register as either Catholic, Protestant, or non-religious; so depending on your choice, you then attend Catholic or "Evangelical" (i.e. Protestant) class or, for the officially "non-religious" (as we registered) you get Ethics.  So far so good for each kid, I think, although it's not clear how much the kids are understanding as of yet.  

Languages are required here, but which ones, and in which order of introduction depends on which Gymnasium you attend.  Julia's school requires English and French:  of course she's delighted with her 3 class periods of English each week, and the girls in her class have all studied it for three years already so the class operates only in English.  I think she's actually learning some grammar, and has come across interesting exercises where of course she relies on her instinct but can't tell her friends why they should use, for example, "has been" instead of "were"...   For French, she's a little behind, since her classmates have also studied French since they were 10, and she's only had a year and a half at the junior high at home, but I think she's managing.  (More words in French are similar to English words than to German words, so I think she has a bit of an advantage with vocabulary, if not in grammar.)

Here is Julia attacking her homework in her Dirndl (the traditional Bavarian women's dress) since Oktoberfest started today...  more on that later!

Luckily, math seems to be at about the right level for each of them too, once we work through the meaning of the word problems.   (I have some sympathy now for people who claim they don't understand word problems, but it's not the math...)

Benjamin was doing a great job with his math homework this morning, and just needed me or Papi for a few keywords.  He even seems to be enjoying his Latin, which everyone in his class is just starting this year.  (His first Latin homework was to bring in something with Latin on it, and luckily I thought of an American penny...  "E pluribus unum".  I think his teacher was impressed!)  So his school starts with Latin as the first required language, and then in a year or two they start English.  Benjamin doesn't get the "break" Julia does by having English class every second day or so, and I was worried about that and the fact that his schools is an all-day school -- but luckily they break up the 8 1/4 hour school day with a 45-minute hot lunch (required... we'll see how our picky eater does!) and then a full hour break in the afternoon before their last hour and a half class.  On the first full day the boys played soccer in that hour, which was super for Benjamin, thankfully.  He even came home saying he was "as good as or even better" than the other 5th and 6th grade boys, and he got some much needed exercise.

Our days do start early now!  Both kids need to take the subway, Julia for at least half an hour, Benjamin for 15 minutes and be at school by 8 a.m.   So we're all up a little after 6 and out the door by 7:15 every day.  The subways are busy at that hour, and so far Thomas and I go with them, although from the 2nd day, Julia had an offer of going on the subway with some new friends, and since then she's come home on her own.  I still go downtown to get Benjamin at the end of the day, which is fun in some ways... he's right downtown and in the nice weather I walk, about 45 minutes (although it's hard to tell, since it's mostly jostling around people on the busy sidewalks as I get into downtown...  kinda different for a small town girl.)

I'll try to update school reports every few weeks or so, but the big event now (no escaping it) is Oktoberfest.  It started today (yes I know, it's not October) and goes for three weeks.  Already when Julia and I were downtown this afternoon it was far more crowded than usual with tourists and lots and lots of people in "Trachten" (traditional Bavarian clothing: Lederhosen, Dirndl, hats...)   But that's another post.