Mi familia nueva y Monteverde

Este pasado Domingo I met mi familia tica nueva. There is a mom, dad and 2 1/2 year old boy.


They are all really nice, but I feel like I don't get to spend much time with them :/ 
Monteverde is beautiful and all of the people are friendly, but its a lot more spread out than Heredia!


We visited the local primary school, Santa Elena Primary School twice this week, teaching a few lessons about the rain forest as well as observing.
I really enjoyed spending time with the children there. The atmosphere at this school, as well as the primary school in Heredia, is a lot more laid back. Students are given more responsibility for their own learning and behavior. Por ejemplo, they are expected to bring their homework in every day but there is no consequence if they do not. There are also not as many regulations for them during their break time as we have in the U.S. Students are allowed to mingle around the school, eating snack and playing with whoever. From what I observed there is no behavior management system in place, students are just expected to do the right thing and are occasionally called down if they are being disruptive. 
My biggest take away from the school visit is that kids are kids wherever they are, no matter what language they speak. 


Later in the week we toured El Trapiche (which means sugar mill in Spanish) and got to see how coffee and sugar are made. We saw everything from the plants they grow on to the machinery they use to peel and sort the coffee beans as well as roast them. We learned about the different types of beans and how there can be anywhere from 1 to three beans within a pod. The pods with only one bean are called Peaberries and are the best because they are more concentrated, but are also the most rare. We also got to see how the sugar is extracted from the sugar cane plant, then boiled down to make sugar and we even got to make our own candy!
It was really neat to see some of the luxuries we take for granted (sugar and coffee) growing in their truest form.  
El Trapiche


Language and Literacy Development

So far I have seen many examples of literacy in my home stay. I was pretty surprised by this because my first family did not have much of this. In the little boy's room there are the letters of the alphabet posted up on the wall along with numbers 1-10. They also own a number of children's and adult books, both in English and Spanish. The children's books consist of topics like numbers, colors, vehicles, Disney characters, etc. Within the adult books there is a lot of nonfiction. Books about Costa Rica and laminated pamphlets about every thing in nature in Costa Rica from birds and insects to trees and other animals. The little boy that lives with me loves these booklets; he points to the different animals and tells me their names, sometimes in English and sometimes in Spanish. I can also tell that the parents are making a conscious effort to help the boy develop his language skills. Sometimes it is difficult for me to determine what he is saying because one, he is a 2 year old and still has difficulty forming all of his words and two, I do not know the language well enough to distinguish what he is saying. There is a lot of verbal communication between the mom and child and it is obvious that his mom is trying to teach him the correct way to pronounce certain words as she corrects him and models the appropriate way to say things.


I would like to find out what kind of support systems there are for parents to help teach their children literacy here. As the required age of beginning school is not until 7 years old, how do parents teach their children until then?