Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Math in Luxembourgish School (Fall, 1st Grade)


Daphne had her first math test today.  I thought I'd share a couple pages from her math workbook, "Flex und Flo." Apparently, Flex is the spring-looking duck-guy, and Flo is the green ball with limbs.

One interesting thing about the public school curriculum Luxembourg is that all kids in the same grade do the same exact thing.  So, all 1st grade (Cycle 2.1) classes in the country are using Flex und Flo and are should be at the same place in the curriculum right now.  The same goes for the German curriculum.

"Rechnen bis 10" is "Count to 10."  In this first unit they learned to write all the numbers from 1 to 10 and worked on basic addition and subtraction.  They have now moved onto patterns, shapes, and simple geometry in their 2nd workbook.

Yes, math is a universal language (thankfully!!!).  Still, there are a few subtle differences.  For example, the European number 1 is written like this:

In practice, I've noticed many adults make he tail on the 1 start all the way an the bottom of the number, like an upside-down V.  I've started writing my #1 like this too!

Then, the 7 has a cross in the middle.  The 9 looks like our lower-case latter g.

Watching Daphne write numbers reminds me of growing up watching my British mom write numbers.  I remember the number 1 in particular looking funny to me.

This page below could easily be from and American math workbook, yet the give-away is that two panels feature sausage math!

And then we just thought that these terrified mushrooms were kind of cute.

1 comment:

Katie Toppel said...

Those 1's got me all the time when I was working at the FIS in Germany...I always thought they were 7's!