Wednesday, April 23, 2014

First Day of School

Jet lag... Definitely. All the traveling yesterday got to me but I was determined to have a good day. I got up and walked with my host brother and sister to school, which only took about 15 minutes. The school is bigger than any school I've ever seen and houses all grades from P-1 (1 year olds) up to 12th grade. It's also trilingual meaning they teach in Spanish, Catalan, and, English and most students understand quite a bit of each language.




I'm with the P-2 (2 year old) group on Wednesdays (today) but every other day I'm with P-3. I was honestly surprised to learn that kids start school that young in Spain but my teacher said this isn't always the case. We got to do a lot of singing and movement classes. Mostly we try to expose the kids to different languages and to help them build psychomotor skills such as running, jumping, balancing, crawling, etc... 

Today was a very unusual day in the school because it is a Catalonian holiday. Sant Jordi, or Saint George, is a big holiday here where the kids dress up as either a knight (Saint George), a princess, or a dragon and traditionally, the girls give boys books and the boys give girls a rose. The kids had so much fun and it was awesome to get to participate in such a unique cultural tradition. 

Around 11:30, I got a 3 hour break in my schedule for lunch (the kids get 2 hours and many go home for lunch) so I went to explore Barcelona with some other student teachers on the trip.





After school, I went to La Ramblas to see all the Sant Jordi festivities with my host mom and brother and sister. My host dad stayed home with the two younger kids who wouldn't enjoy all the crowds.  



I got roses and books from my host dad and brother and I had so much fun with my family touring the city. 




What an incredible first day :)

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