This weekend was the first weekend of Chinese school. It is hard to believe that this is going to be our FOURTH year there. Every year, chinese school is crazy chaotic. This year was no exception.
Our Chinese school has two tracks for their classes: one for kids who speak Chinese at home and one for kids who don’t. We have always had M in the Chinese speaker classes (2 years preschool, 1 year kindergarten). The first year was crazy. The second year, she had a good teacher and seemed to learn things. Last year, she hated it, couldn’t understand what was going on and was bored out of her mind. This year, we placed her in the 2nd grade level for English speakers. Mr. A observed the 1st class. It seems like the material is below M’s level, but being the teacher’s pet that she is, she liked being able to raise her hand and answer questions.
I made a minor mistake by trying to sign L up for the 4 year old + class for English speakers. L is not even 3.5 yet, but she knew a lot of the words they were going to cover due to her Chinese tutoring sessions. I didn’t know that Chinese School holds kids in the same class until the master it, so this class had kids ranging from 4-8 years old. L couldn’t sit still or be quiet enough. I ended up taking her out 1/2 way through the class. I hope we can get our money back.
In addition to Chinese school, both L and M had private tutoring by a Chinese teacher who has actual training in teaching foreign languages. She is unbelievably excellent at teaching age-appropriately. Over the summer, we saw her 2 times a week (30 minutes for L and 50 minutes for M). Now that school is in session (for the girls and for the teacher), we are seeing her once a week. L might also join her cousin S in S’s weekly session for another 45 minutes each weekend, since Chinese school isn’t going to work this year. M also continues to have a 1 hour session each week with her other chinese tutor.
In case you couldn’t follow all that, in an average week it means we have some kind of Chinese on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays, with some Saturdays in the mix too. It is a lot, but I can really see that both girls are making great progress.
I have just resigned myself to putting off other extra curricular activities (besides M’s soccer and swimming lessons in the winter) for a few more years. I feel a bit guilty about not adding violin, but I need to get a better handle on the schedule we have now before I throw another activity in there.
I was originally going to write this post about the social issues at Chinese school, but that will have to wait until tomorrow.
