Blog Update: Forward to 4th Grade in Korea (1st Semester)

P School's School Calendar 2014-15
1st Semester: March 3 - July 29

We haven't done any update on this end for quite a while. And it has just gotten worse since we moved countries. Here's a quick run through with what we've covered so far for the first semester at school.

The first semester has been an adjustment period for all of us and we still are adjusting until now. The classes are shorter. They finish at 3 pm on Mondays and Tuesdays, and around 2 pm on the rest of the week. The kids usually have after-school activities, either at school or at another private academy of everything like English, Math, Arts, Piano etc. They don't have to wear uniforms to school except for the after-school Taekwondo.

We were overwhelmed with the after-school activity choices during the first few months when P comes home with a number of newsletter from the school. All the notices were sent out to each kid including articles on proper parenting, nutrition, and even the school's cafeteria menu for the month. There was also the schedule for "neuk-sek omunim" or the "traffic enforcer mom" that helps out the kids going to school on the crosswalks in the morning.

Most of the after-school activities from school are either free or has a very minimum monthly fee. P ended up with Taekwondo four times a week and an orchestra twice a week. There was also a whole semester of one hour Korean one-on-one tutorial at school once a week and for free. He really needed the Korean language lessons still.

We also managed to get him another Korean language one-on-one lesson two hours, twice a week from the Multicultural Center for free. We had to wait for around a month after we signed up though.  He was able to start around June and we were told that they will start charging a minimal fee by the next month. Luckily, they haven't done so until now. :D P still likes the class and I think this is also helping him learn the language.

Part of the after-school activities are mountain trips once a month, weekly fun stuff at school which actually looks like "fancified" babysitting for kids whose parents are out working. Nonetheless, these Korean students have quite a lot of things to choose from.

During the first semester, he was able to join a bilingual speech contest and made it to City level and perform with the kids' orchestra. He sure had a busy first semester with nothing much to show yet for the academic side because of the language. He can fairly hang out with his classmates now but we still have our work cut out for us on the academic rigors of school. Most of the subjects are still a shot in the dark except English and Math. He was able to figure out the latter a bit easier than the rest, thank goodness.

Before the semester ended, the school sent out activities announcement for the summer break. This will be on my next post.