Duolingo Family Battle and Dead Animals

Has it really only been two weeks in Pistoia?

Sep 16, 2023

According to the calendar, we have been in Pistoia for exactly 2 weeks so far, and Italy for 3.5 weeks. But it feels so much longer than that. According to Avery, it feels like it’s been “forever”. Time does seem to stretch out when there are so many new sights and sounds to explore!

The kids finished their second week of school, and we’ve been pleasantly surprised by the frequent communication from their teachers via the app Kinteract. There have been posts and photos most days. Their class continued the exploration on the theme of water through activities such as:

Exploring different geometric shapes by investigating the amount of water each shape can hold
Reading the book What is Water Worth, and discussing challenges facing our planet when it comes to water supply
Reading about lead polluting the water of Flint, Michigan and using that text to find verbs and write new sentences
Evaluating the amount of water needed to sprout beans
Measuring how much water we use daily to shower, cook, drink, etc.

They also started Boundless Time this week (following Google’s “20% time” to allow for pursuit of personal projects). Each child reflected on their interests and brainstormed ideas to explore. Austin wants to explore "how math was created and why do we use base 10?” Avery wants to explore “why was the United States invented?”

As a family, we started using Duolingo to learn Italian. The gamification aspects of the program are awesome at driving engagement, especially when you have a competitive family like ours. As I type this, Austin is gleefully collecting gems and XP (experience points) to try to boost his position on the leaderboard. John was cunning enough that he strategically did not upgrade his Duolingo personal account into a family account until he had enough XP points to remain far ahead of the rest of the family (I know it was strategic because I asked him to upgrade 4 or 5 times before he actually did it… stalling tactic). So, it’ll have to remain a competition between Austin, Avery and Mommy!

Another theme this week is dead animals, which represents half of Avery’s journal entries. During playground time over the course of 2 days, Avery observed ants slowly eating away a dead lizard. She enthusiastically told us about this after school one day. Then on Friday, during a field trip to Pistoia Zoo, the kids learned that the zoo’s tiger had died 3 weeks ago from old age. Avery was disappointed since she loves big cats and had specifically researched the tiger before the field trip. Circle of life in action!

Highlights