More Report Cards

It has taken a long time, since the first bimester ended the 18th of May,but we have 23 of the 24 report cards. Yesterday and today I went to the Primary School Republica de la India to get the cards from the 6 of our girls who go there. Sinilda and Maria Isabel, who when they came to us in January needed to learn how to use all the tools of school in a crash pre-school and kindergarten course have done very well in 1st grade. Their teacher had nothing but good things to say about them and their grades were fine. They both can draw well (and neither could draw anything when they first came)and one teacher mentioned the delicate drawing that Maria makes. As a reminder these two girls are the first women in their family to ever go to school!

Enibeth´s teacher´s (3rd grade) first comment was that she is in the clouds all the time, isn't paying attention. This is similar to much of her behavior in the home. She doesn´t want to study. Here grades were mediocher - but with no failures. ( My English spelling is getting worse and worse).

This afternoon my friend Amando built a duo-decahydron out of paper so I would know how to do it. The way we made it it looks a lot like a sphere. Two of the kids in 9th grade have to build a cone, cylinder and a sphere. Dr. Math tells me that it is not possible to make a sphere from paper. I found two ways, but the thing we built today really had 20 triangular sides, but becasue each side is a triangle within a circle and the edges are folded out it looks really sphere like.

Graciela needs glasses. She has been having a lot of head aches and finally yesterday I took her to an opticion and it is quite likely that her astigmatism in her left eye is causing some or all of the headaches. She should get her glasses next week.

Today I received the report cards of one in 4th grade and two in 5th. We have one more to get - 8th grade - but I would probably faint if she had a failure. That means that only one of our girls had any failures for the first bi-mester.

Estefany has improved a lot in reading - she is 9 and in first grade and has some learning challenges in language (but is better in math). I have worked with her almost every day and she is reading a lot of words and writing them too. I make a lot of vocabulary cards with the word on one side and some kind of little picture on the other side. The beginners can read the word and then check to see if they are right or they can look at the picture and write the word.

Estefany qualifies for special ed help because of her age and difficulties. The best part of this is that she will get a speech and language evaluation as well as eye and hearing test - free. God surely had a had in this as the director and I and Estefany were at the offices if IPHE (Special Ed) trying to get her inscribed and while the director was talking to verious people with no progress, one of the social workers there saw Estefany and I in the waiting room and started to talk to us. I gave a pitch for why I wanted Estefany tested and we received an immediate visit with the speach and labgusge person, got Estefany enrolled (even though she was born in Costa Rica and has no Panamanian identity numer) and an appointment both for vision and hearing.

More later. Tia Sue