The challenges of learning in three languages at once

So we chose a school that we thought would make sense because it had some classes in English, had Hebrew and some Judaica thrown in and was mostly taught in Spanish.  I did not appreciate several things when we made that decision:

1.  Elisa was just beginning to read in English when we left so she is completely mixed up.  We read books in English together at home and she has started to read words like "take" in Spanish so they sound like "takay."  They had a day of reading for the first grade and Elisa shared a story that she "wrote" in Spanish - pretty cool.

Dia de la lectura

2.  I can barely help Elisa with her lenguaje (language arts) homework, can pretend to help Jonathan, and cannot even fake it with Renee.

3.  Rob has had to step in more to help out with Renee and Jonathan's homework.  She had a test in Social Studies on the history of governance in Chile.  Rob sat down with her and reviewed the Spanish text and helped explain everything to her in Spanish.  What is interesting, or perhaps not given the history, is that Chile's current government looks very similar with three branches of government, senators, and representatives etc.  She also had to study something about human rights but it looked like it was emphasizing the rights of children rather than a look at the history of human rights in this country.  Not sure when that is introduced.

4.  Renee was writing down her assignments by subject and she titled one "Inglish."  I'll have to admit that spelling in Spanish is a lot easier but boy are they going to be messed up for a while.

5.  Renee and Jonathan both have final exams this year spread out over the next few weeks (school ends 12/9).  I am helping them out with math, science, Hebrew, and Torah; we are letting them figure out English, and Rob is helping with lenguaje (language arts) and social studies.  Renee is covering the chapters in Shmot (Exodus) that have to do with the exodus from Egypt, thank goodness.  The hard part is that the text she has is Hebrew on one side and Spanish on the other and the workbook that includes some commentary (Rashi etc.) is all in Spanish.  My Hebrew is much better than my Spanish but I am having problems getting through it myself.  Luckily grades really don't matter this year so we are telling them all to just do their best.  I did finally break down and print out the section of the Torah in English - thank goodness for the internet!

6.  I think that I have already mentioned that Jonathan's favorite subject is lenguaje (language arts in Spanish). He is really enjoying the challenge.  He just finished reading Las Brujas (The Witches by Roald Dahl) in Spanish and apparently understood most of it (he has read it before in English).  He is now attempting the first Harry Potter book.  Pretty amazing.