We have completed our first two months of the new scholastic
year. This will be our second year in the Italian school system. I had great
hopes of writing more about the school experience last year, but, like many
resolutions, it just didn’t happen. I’ll try to make it up this year. So, here
we go….
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| Isabel and Josh in front of Isabel's school. |
Isabel has started second grade (seconda). Yea! She is
really excited about it. She completed first grade last June. We threw her into Italian elementary school
with the sink or swim attitude. We figured, if she sank, she was still young
and all would be fine. If she swam, it would be wonderful. Well, we think she
did great, and she remained happy which was one of the most important things
for us.
Of course, the question everyone keeps asking is, “So, does
she speak Italian?” That is actually a hard question to answer for a few
reasons. First, kids don’t learn language like we do. She is not studying verb
conjugations and proper Italian grammar (yet). She doesn’t know what the
subject or indirect subject is in a sentence. She picks up things that she
hears. She learns some simple vocabulary from her homework. She pieces them
together and out comes some speaking, however grammatically incorrect.
The language skill is also difficult to judge since she
definitely does not want to speak it, at all, in front of us. If I am around
when she is playing with an Italian friend, I catch a few words muttered here
and there as I am hiding behind a wall being very quiet. It’s coming along. Her
Italian is not grammatically correct and sometimes it’s just totally crazy
wrong, but I’m glad she is trying. Today was the first time I heard her mutter,
“Ma dai!” and that told me she will be picking up extraordinarily more of the
language this year since she is going into second grade with a year of Italian
school already under her belt. “Ma dai” is the equivalent in English of saying,
“come on!” in an exasperated way as if the person in front of you on line is
asking one to many questions to the cashier and taking way too much time. “Ma
dai!” is often used with an exasperated hand gesture.
Josh has also started school with one year completed. He is
in what they call “Grande”. It’s the third year of the preschool. The preschool
is basically divided into Piccoli (3 year olds), Medi (4 year olds), and Grandi
(the 5’s). In the American school system, Josh would have started his first day
of Kindergarten this year. He would have been starting elementary school. It
was a little hard for me to see him continue back to preschool, but I remind
myself that his experience is so different than most other American 5 year olds.
I have to appreciate that, and I hope he will too someday.
In Grande, Josh will learn to write all the capital letters
and do some very simple writing and calculating of numbers. That, and the
continuation of fine motor skill development, is pretty much all the curriculum
that is covered at this level of school. I’ve heard people say it’s what
American kindergarten was 40 yrs ago when mostly you did the alphabet and some
finger painting.
When Josh moves on to Scuola Elementare and the first grade,
he will start with A, capital letters, and 2+2. They start very basic.
Preschool is not mandatory, so some kids are coming to first grade with only 6
years of being home with grandma. When starting first grade, they basically
only assume the kids know how to write their name and know how to write all the
letters in capital. That’s it. They start slowly, but give them loads of
homework every week so they progress quickly.
Isabel’s homework last year proved quite challenging for
both of us. She attends school from 8a-4p Mondays and Wednesdays. The other
days of the week, she attends from 8a-12:30. She would come home, eat lunch, and
then start homework. It was basically like homeschooling your child, with the
added challenge of everything being in a foreign language. I would sit there
with her, surrounded by Italian dictionaries and Google Translate on the
laptop. She was exhausted. One day she simply fell asleep with her head lying
on her notebook. As the year progressed, she began to understand more and more Italian,
and her exhaustion lessened. Oddly enough, I hadn’t even noticed this
phenomenon until the teachers pointed it out at a parent-teacher meeting
sometime around March.
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| One example of homework from first grade. Each week was a new letter of the alphabet and its assorted combination with the vowels. It cracks me up how sigaretta (cigarette) was one of her S words (the picture colored orange). Would you ever see that in an American school?? |
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| Another homework example from later in the year. |
I can certainly say this year is easier already. Having a
much greater understanding of the language is the biggest help. Also, the
teachers you start with in First grade are the same ones you have all through
elementary school (unless they quit or retire), so her teachers know her well
and she is very familiar with them. I think she got lucky, because we really
like them both and they call her their little amore (love). All in all, school
is going well for both kids this year. It’s definitely an adventure, but a
great one.
