Back to School, Sorta

Marilyn, March 2, 2015

Today was the first day of school for Uruguayan students, meaning that the stores have been full of back-to-school supplies for the past couple of weeks.  As a kid, I loved buying new school supplies, so for the second time in seven months, those shelves full of shiny notebooks and pointy pencils have kicked up all sorts of nostalgia for me.  I've wondered all over again how my life and my kids' lives would be different if they were in a traditional school rather than being educated at home. This time, though, the vague feeling of exclusion was tempered by also seeing the school uniforms for sale.  (They're pure WHITE, clearly not designed by a parent or anyone who has ever done laundry.)  I know without a doubt that my boys would rebel against wearing one of those uniforms, and I'm just as happy to be spared that fight.  Though Gene and I considered finding a private school for the boys to attend for the remaining four months we're here so that they could really get immersed in Spanish, we didn't end up doing the groundwork to make that happen.  So sort of by default, we will continue to home school.  Home schooling is technically illegal here, but no one is going to care that we're doing it.  And since public primary school students attend classes for four hours either in the morning or in the afternoon, no eyebrows will be raised when my kids are seen out and about during the day.

We've been doing a bit of school work all along, and certainly many of our travels and experiences have been more educational than any lesson I could have planned.  But with the start of the school year here, it seemed a good time to get more serious and more structured.  Since history is our favorite subject, that was an easy one to cover.  Both boys and I are enthusiastic about learning South American history, starting, of course, with Uruguay.  I bought a kids' book that covers the important events in Uruguay's history in a story-telling form.  It's in Spanish, so I'm working at translating the stories for myself first and then for the boys.  Each day, we translate the title of the next chapter, and the boys each draw a picture of what they imagine the next story might be about.

As we read, we also pay attention to the names of the people mentioned, and what they're remembered for.  Then we find and label places on our maps that are named for or by those people.  For example, the river where the boys had their sailing lesson on Saturday is named for Juan Diaz de Solís, the leader of the first European expedition to explore in this part of South America.  He is credited with naming the Río de la Plata, which we can see from the window as we read about him. The boys remember him best because shortly after naming it, he was eaten by cannibals.

We will also be learning about the coat of arms for each country we study, and the boys are drawing those as well.  (If you want a chuckle, take a look at Argentina's.)   Uruguay's coat of arms includes scales representing equality; Montevideo's hilltop fortress, representing strength; a galloping horse, representing liberty; and an ox, representing abundance.  (Javy drew his ox with an udder, thinking it was a cow, which would not be a bad guess.)  

All of these symbols are watched over by an anthropomorphized sun with alternating straight and wavy rays.  This is the Sun of May, used as a symbol by both Uruguay and Argentina to represent the dawning of a new nation.  The name refers to the revolution in May of 1810 which marked the beginning of independence from Spain.  It does NOT refer to the influence of the Maya on Uruguayan culture, as one website claims.  As the mother of two Mayan boys, this ludicrous statement made me kind of crazy.  The Maya lived and continue to live 4,100 miles away from here, considerably farther than Alaskan Inuits live from Atlanta, and we all know how much effect the Inuit have had on Georgia.  But, hey, they're indigenous peoples, and they're from Latin America, so it must be legitimate to lump them all together into one big cultural pile.  (Sorry.  End of rant.)

Besides South American history, we just can't seem to get away from the U.S. Civil War.  My boys have always learned history and social studies best through historical fiction, and we're really enjoying a book that we were given as a going-away present, Turn Homeward, Hannalee by Patricia Beatty.  It is set partially in Roswell, Georgia, now a suburb of Atlanta, and tells of Sherman burning Atlanta and Marching to the Sea, and also of the destruction of a mill whose ruins we have often visited.  So we feel a bit tied to home as we read.

We're covering other subjects besides history and geography, but with much less enthusiasm.  We continue to plug away at reading and math.  Today's math lesson was incorporated into baking cookies, so it was relatively painless.  

The cookie-baking also afforded us the chance to practice some housekeeping skills, which always need work.  

Science gets covered with impromptu question-and-answer sessions with our resident biologist and with explorations on the beach.  Our PE curriculum is mostly romping in the waves and riding our bikes wherever we want to go, with sailing and occasional surfing lessons thrown in.  The boys' blog posts suffice for composition.  (They'd love to know it if you're reading them!)  I had planned to have them do some creative writing along with our South American history study, but there's only so much you can cram into a morning of work, so that has already fallen by the wayside.

We're certainly not covering everything we could be, but it'll do.  I'm still in the process of trying to arrange for "after school" activities.  Besides the sailing lessons on Saturday, there's at least in theory the potential for basketball, swimming, skating, and aerial dance.  My job for this week is to investigate those opportunities.  

I'm also making a point to get us out of the house and into the community each day, whether that be a bike ride to the paper store to buy drawing paper, or a walk to town for ice cream, or today's outing to the empanada restaurant.  Adventures seem to find us on these expeditions.  On the way to the ice cream parlor on Friday, we noticed a big lump on the beach and went to investigate.  It turned out to be a sea turtle, unfortunately dead, almost as big as one of my boys!  And my favorite image from today was Teo and Javy riding their bikes ahead of me on our way back from our empanada outing, coasting downhill and scaring up a flock of our favorite little green parrots which flew in front of them in one colorful, fluttering mass.   Tomorrow we'll cut our school work short for a field trip via local bus to the next town down the beach, to shop at the Tuesday morning market and then meet up with a family that will hopefully prove to be new friends to us.  They speak no English, so our Spanish will get a work-out, which is just what we need.

I am trusting that just the experience of being here will be an education in itself.  If they learn no math or grammar but come away with an appreciation of another culture and a love of travel, and if they develop a bit of empathy for the outsider through this experience, that's more than enough.  None of that will show up on any standardized test, but will serve them well in life, and as far as I'm concerned, that's what education needs to be about.