Recent Accomplishments

Miles graduated from Kindergarten last week. They had a little ceremony marking their move to the big school – the teachers told something that each kid had said he/she learned and was looking forward to learning next year. Mrs. Jambga, Miles’ teacher said: “We sure wish we’d had Miles all year. He brings such interesting topics to our discussion. He always brings it to a whole ‘nother level of learning.” They’re studying the body next year and Miles is looking forward to hearing about how bones are made. (Not sure if they’ll go into that much scientific depth, but we’ll find out!)

[Imagine adorable videos of Miles's graduation and his school performances...that cannot be uploaded due to technical difficulties. But here he is:]
Miles had a good semester. His reading and writing really took off, so that he is now starting to read the words in his books on his own. That has been the most exciting development for us to see. In math, he’s doing really well. He can add and subtract in his head and count to 100 by 1s, 5s, and 10s. The other day he was even doing multiplication in his head. It seems like he’s experiencing a rush of understanding and being able to compute on his own. This semester, he had two “units of inquiry” around which all their lessons focused: the first was “from field to table” so he has learned about the origins of food, food groups and healthy eating habits (enhanced by trips to farms, as well as our garden - this boy is an eater now! What an appetite!). The other unit was about birds, so he will have a lot to talk about with his bird-watching grandparents. He also completed the first level of karate and a course on chess.

Since Eliza has been going to a local school (she wasn’t old enough to start at HIS yet), she’s on a trimester system like all the schools here. They had off the whole month of April, during which time she had two main activities: swimming lessons and playing with Angie. Eliza’s swimming teacher, Heather, was great, and Eliza learned how to swim!

Angie was also a great friend, and they had a lot of fun girly time together. Angie’s mother Aminata is from Mauritania and her father is from Syracuse, NY (his father is a retired professor of psychology there!)…but very unfortunately for us, they are moving to Bangladesh this week. We will miss them!