Government school in Mexico

For Kinder we have opted to have the girls go to the government schools. With Alana she already knows everything in English that they will be teaching her in Spanish. Actually she already knows most of it in Spanish also. So we decided it would be silly to pay a ton of money for her to go play with friends every day. Its a good thing we decided that to because we dont quite yet have the income we were expecting. Here in Mexico they have three years of Kinder. The first year at the age of three is optional and is a lot like preschool in the states. We opted out of that year and started her at the beginning of this school year. If you remember we were living in a smaller town when we started her and she loved it. I was having a hard time with her teacher there but was glad for her to be in school. When we moved to the city we found a couple government schools and were actually allowed to pick the one we wanted. Its totally secure and I LOVE her teacher. She is about my age and seems like someone I would hang out with if given the chance. She works so good with Alana and seems to like the challenge of it. When I asked her how Alana was doing with her Spanish she said she speaks great and only some times has trouble understanding words. When she does have trouble the teacher says she gives her multiple different words or ideas or uses her hands to help her figure it out. She also said she rarely has to explain a word more than once. How great that the teacher takes this extra time with her and that she took the time to explain this to me. If you remember from a previous post when I asked her old teacher she bluntly told me that Alana spoke better than me and then turned back to her task at hand.

Christmas break started the week of the 17thish. I put the ish for a good reason, just read about her Christmas party and you will understand. She was suppose to go back to school on the 10th of January. This seemed like a long break and she was so ready the morning of the 10th. I´m pretty sure I mentioned in the Christmas party post also that when we arrived on the 10th the place was torn apart for remodeling. Well its three weeks later and this morning is her first day back. I have this sinking feeling were gonna walk all the way there and they wont have it for some reason or another. Issac had to use the truck this morning to bring the baby in for her immunizations (which will be another post) so we are on foot. Which is fine actually its a nice walk and with just the older two its good exercise and its not to cold for them.

So all in all the government school for Kinder can be a pain and let them miss three weeks of school but like I said its Kinder and mainly a play date every day. This teacher does actually send home homework and encourage the parents to do things with the kids outside of school and class work. Alana and I love to do activities and she has about three or four learning websites so we have that covered and I hope I can always manage to do this type of thing with her. Any of you that have kids here in Mexico and want those websites let me know. Her favorite one, I found out while I was in Dallas, is used by the schools there to give kids homework. This made me feel really good about the sites I found and choose for her to do.

We are so excited about her first day back. I'm also hoping this routine will help with the nightly bed wetting we still have. We are also trying to remember to wake her up and bring her to the bathroom before we go to bed. This usually helps but not always. Any suggestions on that issue are welcome although I'm afraid we have tried everything.