American vs. German school

All over the my Facebook feed, I am reading about the school year ending. Meanwhile, we still have about 6 weeks of school left. So I figured I'd do some more random notes but this time they all have to do with differences we have notices between American and German schooling.

- First and most obvious one is that German kids have much shorter summer breaks. It's only about 6 weeks long. However, there are longer vacations throughout the year. For example, Easter is 2 weeks long and winter break is about 4 weeks long.

-There are no crayons here - as in they do not exist. Everybody uses pencils and markers, even 3 year olds. This is more than ok by me since I grew up in Russia and crayons didn’t exist there either, but still different from USA.

- Back in the beginning of the school year I had a conversation with a teacher who explained to me that I have to make sure that pencils are of the appropriate length. Basically anything that’s shorter than a crayon is not good. The pencil has to comfortably rest in that spot between a thumb and an index finger.

Andrei holding his pencil correctly :)

- Right from the start the kids are taught to write using cursive. Again personally I love it, I think that having a nice handwriting is well … nice. Because Andrei’s school last year didn’t enforce it, he has a lot of catch up but he is working on it nearly daily. Ilya has beautiful handwriting according to his teachers.

- I think it's only a German thing but maybe not. When most people of non-German origin I know count using their hand, they do it this way using their index finger for number 1

In Germany one is a thumb. It still looks a bit funny but I guess the kids are truly integrating into a German culture.

Andrei demonstrating counting - this is #1

Math, 2nd grade going back to March

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