Oscar turns seven

Oscar's 7th birthday party was a lot of fun.  He invited three friends from church to come over for a pirate party.

 First they played Mario Kart on the Wii.  Everybody had a great time.

Except Calvin (who was sad because he wanted to play).

 Next they played Pirate Bingo.

 Then it was time for lunch.  Tina made homemade pizza.  The boys got to choose their own toppings.

 

 

 Sara found some pizza crust on the floor...

 After lunch it was time for the treasure hunt.

 This clue was hidden in the fridge.

The next clue was in the basement.

 To the sewing room.

 The boys thought the clue said to look under the sewing machine.

 They had to go back to the basement to reread the clue.

 Reading the next clue...

 The "treasure" (Kit Kat bars) was hidden under Oscar's bed.

 Opening presents...

 The Perplexus was a big hit.

 After presents, it was time to eat the cupcakes.

 

 

 

 

 

We took some group photos before the boys got picked up.

Sara turns one

Sara's first birthday was on Valentine's Day.  Tina had scheduled a small party for earlier in the day but Calvin was sick so the party had to be canceled.  Calvin was feeling better after I got home from work so we had a small(er) party to celebrate Sara's first year with our family.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Still more of Oscar's schoolwork

Last time I posted some scans of a recent math test.  This time I selected some German writing exercises.

German children begin elementary school with the 1st grade at age six.  Kindergarten (ages 3-5) is mostly just structured play.  Before starting at the German school last August, Oscar had already spent a year in preschool in Maryland and another year in (American) Kindergarten learning letters and numbers.  So a lot of the math and language topics covered this year at the German school have been topics he has already seen previously.  Of course, the language is not a review so this has worked out pretty well.

Once nice thing about this situation is that it has given Oscar a chance to focus on learning the language instead of having to learn a new language and new subject material at the same time.  He still struggles with some common mistakes -- he gets some of the numbers and letters confused (6 and 9, b and d, he sometimes draws the number 3 flipped horizontally) -- but mostly he does fine with letters and numbers.

I noticed midway through Kindergarten that his handwriting was pretty sloppy.  But none of his Kindergarten teachers at the American school said anything about it so I didn't think there was much to gain by pressing the issue (especially since it was clear to me that he understood the concepts).  The German experience has been different -- handwriting is much more important to the Germans (so much so that the children are expected to write with fountain pens starting in the 2nd grade).  It has been clear from the beginning of the school year that Oscar's handwriting will be something we need to work to improve.  His teachers mostly let it slide while he was still learning how to communicate but now that communication and language skills have begun to improve, several of his assignments have come back with notes indicating that the handwriting needs to improve.

Here is a writing assignment from a few weeks ago with handwriting that was judged to be poor enough that the teacher made up an entirely new assignment on the next page just so Oscar could have additional practice.

"Oscar, we must practice this again.  Especially the 'e' and 's'.  Please do the work."  [arrow points to next page]

Here is the extra assignment -- the words were carefully chosen to provide extra practice with the letters 'e' and 's'.

"much better"

Here is a more recent handwriting assignment from last week.  It is clear that Oscar has the ability to do the work properly.  He just doesn't think it is important.  His teacher told me that when it comes to handwriting, he is "faul" (lazy).  I couldn't really disagree.

Here are a few more recent writing exercises from a different workbook:

Finally, here is a picture of a picture he colored where the students were supposed to provide a caption for the photo.  This is maybe two weeks old.  Oscar wrote "Dei opa hat fur Mtagesin Pitsu".  You can see the teacher's correction: "Der Opa hat als Mittagessen Pizza" (The grandfather has pizza for lunch).  I was pleased that Oscar was able to express the thought entirely in German without asking his teacher for help.  He used Die instead of Der and "für" instead of "als" but I'm not going to dwell on these mistakes -- correct use of definite articles and prepositions are two of the hardest parts of German grammar to master.  I suppose he will eventually learn that in the nominative case masculine things use "der" and feminine things use "die".  The prepositional use is especially interesting -- he took the English preposition that fits the sentence (for) and translated it directly into German.  That's what I would expect him to do at this point in his development but it isn't the grammatically correct thing to do in this case (or in many others either). I was pleased he put Pizza at the end of the sentence (where it belongs in German) instead of in the middle of the sentence (where it goes in English).  The spelling obviously needs improvement but this will improve as his exposure to the language deepens.  We have been reading books from the German library and I have noticed that this has helped him develop the ability to recognize some common "sight words" (he might not know how to spell them from memory but he is able to recognize them on paper and speak them correctly).