The past two weeks have been important in Grace and Tessa’s
school life so we wanted to share what they have been up to. The girls attend a semi-private Catholic
school that has a very good reputation and high standards. Their school is run by the Jesuits who have
been providing education in Zaragoza for 450 years!!! To say there is a strong foundation when it
comes to pedagogy would be an understatement.
Our school schedule is quite different from at home, the regular school
day is 9-12:30 then 3:30-5pm. The time
between 12:30-3:30pm includes one hour of extracurricular activities such as
drawing/painting, rhythmic gymnastics, basketball, football, French etc. The second hour they have a hot Spanish lunch
with has a first plate, second plate and dessert always accompanied with bread
and water and the third hour is an extra course the class participates in such
as theatre, computers, English, or study hall.
All of these activities cost extra so families can choose what they can
afford and if they want the full schedule.
I would say 98% of children go 9am-5pm every day; my girls go two full
days a week and come home for lunch the other three days.
This year Grace has been working very hard in Grade 3, she
has an enormous amount of homework and is tested consistently in math,
language, social science, English and Religion.
We are very proud of her as her reading and writing in Spanish have
greatly improved and without any special conditions she is in the top half of
her class. Her teacher Marta has
supported and encouraged Grace every step which has been a great motivation for
her. She really enjoys music class where
she has learned to play the recorder and has learned about the great composers
and can identify their major works.
Religion is also very interesting for her and the curriculum is very
sophisticated. In addition Grace has
just completed the first year of Catechism and next March she will have her
First Communion. To mark the end of the
first year the families were invited to a great service in the church and the
kids demonstrated what they had been learning.
This was followed by an elaborate merienda (5pm snack) in the
cafeteria. Grace also started private
piano lessons in January with a very talented young music student from the
Conservatory. Grace loves Elena and is
progressing very well. Her big event
last week was her theater class’ presentation of 3 songs from the musical
“Grease”. Grace had the role of Marty
and spoke her line in perfect Spanish and then did 2 dance routines. We curled her hair for the part and have included
a picture for you to see.
Tessa, who turned 6 years old in March, is in Infantile
Tercero which is the equivalent to kindergarten. Infantile includes two years of preschool and
then kindergarten, children begin at 3 years old here and many go full day. Tessa has been blessed with an amazing
teacher Marta and a wonderful class of good friends. This is their second year together as the
system here keeps classes and teachers together for 2 years in a row. Tessa is reading in Spanish and like Grace has
been speaking fluently for some time.
She loves school and thus has been very sad that she is graduating to primary
leaving behind her beloved teacher Marta and the security of Infantile which is
set apart from the rest of the school. To commemorate this transition Tessa had her
“Graduation” ceremony last Friday May 25th. It is held in the school theater and all 5
classes of Kindergarten had prepared songs to present. They also sang all together a lovely song
called,”Somos Amigos” (We are friends) and Tessa loved this song so much but it
made her very emotional. To end the
ceremony they each wore a ‘cap’ (made by parents) and received their ‘scroll’
from their teacher. It was a lovely
event and we ended by having a small reception back in their classroom. Anatolijus volunteered to take the pictures
of all the children for our class when they received their scroll and he did a
great job!
The following day Tessa performed in the end of the year
Rhythmic Gymnastics Exhibition which showcases each of the classes. She did very well and is no longer shy or
embarrassed about performing as you can see from the photos. So it
has been a busy time but we are now on ’summer schedule’ which means the girls
finish every day at 1pm and we do not go back, instead we head down to the pool
as it has been 33C consistently for the past week. The girls last day of school is June 19th
and on June 17th our twin nephews, Rhys and Sam, arrive to spend
three weeks with us before the girls and I join them flying back to Canada. So things are going very well with the girls
and we are looking forward to our return to Victoria this summer.
