Tinkaroo
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jan 24, 2005
- Messages
- 4,635
monicatb said:OK. Then there's not that different after all. I thought they just stayed at home until 5 yo. FYI, in case you're interested, the school system in Mexico works like this. The public school system starts also mandatory at 5 yo. There are also daycare centers for working mothers who receive younger kids, even babies. But here the public schools are not like those in the US, but they are geared more towards the low income class people. Unfortunately, this is how it works and the schools and the education is not as good as it should be. Most, or I'd say all of the middle to upper income class people send their kids to private schools. There are religious and non-religious private schools too, with a wide range of monthly tuition fees, so they can be affordable to more people. Basically the difference between private schools are the facilities, the school size, the activities offered, sports, etc. and also if they teach a second language (mostly english) and at what level, so there are schools with one hour a day of english, there are bilingual schools which have half day and half day or multicultural school, as they're called, which are all-day english except for one or two subjects in spanish. This is where my kids go.
After this loooong background, the school levels that our school has are:
Nursery-2 years (some skip this level)
Pre-K-3 years
K1-4 years
K2-5 years
Pre-first-6 years
Elementary school-7 years
and the rest goes about the same
As you see, our school has an additional year called Pre-first, but that is because the kids learn to speak, read and write spanish and english at the same time, so they require a higher maturity level to be able to handle this. If the school has few or none english time, they don't have this level so kids start Elementary school at 6 yo.
As you say, in Kindergarten they work on letters, numbers, weather, days of the week, etc. and activities with songs, stories & games, and in our school this is in english. They do go 5 days a week though, and the hours vary from one school to another.
Ufff! I guess that SUMS it up.
I hope it wsn't that boring.
Monica
Very interesting, Monica. I didn't know there was such an emphasis on English!
I also really like the picture of your kids in your signature.
or your neurotic online friend checking on you?
....it is forecasted to be 70 degrees here today!!!! My kind of weather, not to hot not to cold.....kind of Goldilocks weather!!!
)
) 
)
)
and jeans
a HUGE spark. By the grace of God he wasn't electrocuted. Fun, but challenging years 
)
