Comparing Vietnamese curriculum - VN national books

I bought 1st grade Vietnamese language curriculum in two cities, Hanoi(North) and Saigon(South). There is supposed to be a standardized national curriculum where all students study the same things. But the books are different looking at first glance(plus I forgot I had purchased some in Hanoi) that I ended up with two sets of essentially the same material. BUT they have divergent approaches. Lessons do correspond; number 10 in one set teaches the same thing as number 10 in the other, but the Southern book is much more child friendly, with color pictures. There are no pictures in the Northern book. It really was an eye opener.

South - Part 1, Text book, Workbook and writing practice

South - Part 2

North - Text books for both parts, I would have bought matching workbooks if I had found them.

South -Lesson 28

North - Lesson 28 is on the left side, Lessons 29,30 on the right!

Back side of the South text and work books. 

This shows how cheap the books are, yet there are kids who don't go because they can't afford to buy books! 10,700d is about 50 cents for the Text, the work book is 4,000d and the writing book is 2,500d.I had thought to make copies and have her write on the copy, but the copies would have cost much more than the writing book did.

The backs also list the other available books. So for the Text books there are:
1) Vietnamese Language 1
2) Math 1
3) Nature & Society 1
4) Writing 1

Work books have:
1) Vietnamese Language 1
2) Math 1
3) Nature & Society 1
4) Morality 1
5) Drawing 1
6) Singing 1

Last Space shuttle launch(or not!)

A few months ago I found out that there was supposed to be one last shuttle launch, and it was going to be a night launch on my birthday. So, since I had not yet gone to see a launch, I decided I wanted to go. It wasn't easy to get tickets, there was a lottery, but I was selected and we got tickets. They postponed it once, so it's not my birthday and not a night launch either, then after we spent most of a day at Cape Canaveral, it was postponed again. We decided it was fortunate we lived fairly close, since there were people visiting from other places who would not be able to come back for the launch.

Shakespeare's birthday

Sunflower theatre students helped to put on a Shakespeare birthday celebration at the Arts Garage in Delray Beach. Part of it involved dressing up, and there were so many lovely fairy wings to use.

Chickens in math class!

Way back before K, I found a sale on a math curriculum with froggy manipulatives. Every once in a while I'll take it out to add variety. The frogs have cute little logs that allow for grouping by tens. Then we had to weigh some of our new chicks. They look pretty silly at that in-between stage.

Checking out the new surroundings!

Weighing chickens using frogs...

We can't see in the back!

Take me to your leader!

New chicks!

We picked up 9 baby cochin chicks from our cochins today. Apparently the red had escaped, so these are from the little blue cochin roo. We also lost both the orpingtons sometime last year, so it's been a few months since we've had any chickens. She knows we can't have any roos, so she picked out one that definitely had roo characteristics. Hopefully we have a better ratio, no.

Miami Seaquarium mammals and mating turtles!

We attend a homeschool class at Miami Seaquarium, bu I generally don't stay in the homeschool class with the little girl, and often end up going the the Top deck show to observe the dolphins. After the show, the trainers tossed some balls into the pool for the dolphins to play with. They were able to toss them pretty well.

Later I ended up at the tropical birds section, which include some tortoises. Some were a bit busy.

After the class Cowgirl has time to see the killer whale show, and it's always a game to see whether we sit in the splash zone or not. The water from this tank is cold!

Camping at Jonathon Dickinson State Park

We went camping with a few friends at Jonathon Dickinson State Park. Our one mistake was getting a site at Pine Grove. There's no shade there. Apparently there had been fire or storm damage to the trees. It was like camping in a field. But it was still fun, we just spent all our time down by the water(or in it!)

Pine Grove site

This tree had the sand washed out from under it!

Owls out during the day!

Getting a new inflatable kayak ready

Paddling down the river

Dictionaries - Not enough words!

I have had this particular dictionary for at least 15 years, and I have finally reached the conclusion that it's not very helpful. It's a Viet-English, English-Viet book, but I've found that having both directions in one book makes the set of words included rather limited. Also it's copyrighted in 1975, so I'm sure there are new terms that are missing. I bought a Viet-English only book from Vinabook.com, and it is supposed to have 175,000 word/phrases. In truth, the way Vietnamese is used a lot of concepts are actually expressed using 2 words, so the V-E/E-V dictionary has definitions for the individual words but not so many phrases. I had to start using the V-E book recently because there were words in our 1st grade Vietnamese curriculum that I could not find in the other dictionary. 1st grade words! Not in the dictionary! Now I know I need to get an updated English-Vietnamese dictionary too.

Dasiy Campfire and camping

We had a campfire for our Daisy troup at Quiet Waters Park. It was also our end of year get together, and so we had a storyteller come too. Camping was allowed, but it ended up that only our family actually spent the night there. We had a fire and smores (including some with thin mints)

Getting the food ready

Setting up seating 

Checking for fish in the lake

View out the tent

Checking the tent construction

Roots and Shoots working in a community garden

We are also in Roots and Shoots. We do things like Peace day, nature activities and volunteerism. Here we're working in a community garden raising fresh veggies for a local food bank.