Trabalho de turma

A Monica (ela devia ser guest blogger here) comecou um trabalho legal para as nossas criancas. Como sempre ela fez uma coisinha linda. Vou mostrar a foto.

escolinha

A capa do livrinho tem uma foto de cada crianca. Quantas criancas nos temos! Nao tem como nao ter orgulho vendo tantas criancinhas bonitas e seus sorrisos! Bom, dentro do livro cada crianca tem sua pagina com frases sobre a crianca.  Cada semana uma crianca decora a sua pagina. Ficou muito lindo. Todos amaram. Esta semana e a vez da "Daughter" decorar!!! Fotos da decoracao dela coloco depois. Fui!

Aulinha que me faz pensar--ai ai

A nossa aulinha ontem foi otima. Cantamos as musiquinhas, lemos o mesmo livro e fizemos um Valentine's day craft.
Esta semana meus filhos so querem escutar duas musicas:
"O que e que tem na sopa do nenem"



e "A canoa virou". Os dois da palavra cantada. Bom, acontece que a Monica escolheu  "A canoa virou" para cantar na escolinha. De forma que tudo que escuto no momento e a musica. Ja ate decorei. Resolvi que e outra musica que se encaixa nos padroes de musicas que so o brasileiro entende.
olha so o que diz:
Rema, Rema,
A canoa virou porque deixaram ela virar
Foi por causa da fulana que nao soube remar
Se eu fosse um peixinho e soubesse nadar eu tirava a Fulana dofundo do mar
Siri pra ca, siri pra la (algumas versoes falam ti-ri-ri)
A Fulana e feia e quer casar.

Okay, agora olha so o que estamos ensinamos as nossas criancas:
1- quando algo de ruim acontece, sempre tem um culpado. Esse culpado, deixa que as coisas ruims acontecam ou seja ele nao tem controle nenhum sobre o ocorrido. Hum... sera que estamos ensinando falta de responsabilidade pessoal?
2- Se eu pudesse eu ajudava e participava. Mas como nao posso eu fico na minha e deixo a fulana se afogar. Afinal ela e culpada mesmo, nao sabe remar. Eu claro, nao sou culpada pois so nao sei nadar. Os outros sao culpados, so eu que nao! Rensposabilidade pessoal? Nenhuma.
3- Quem e feio, nao casa. Conheco gente muito feia casada. Independentemente insinamos que beleza e importante se quisermos ter outros na nossa vida. Humm... Tudo bem, que muitas dessas escolhas foram feitas pela rima... Eu adoro uma rima...mas sera que nao tinha jeito de dar uma mensagem melhor?

Em resumo, ensinamos as criancas, que beleza e importante e responsabilidade pessoal nao. Independente disso tudo, meus filhos adoram a rima e a musica. Isso com os gestos... irresistivel! Entao, conclusao so brasileiro que escuta esta cancao ha muito tempo nao se ofende. Eu, nem me atrevo a traduzir!!

Tips to Raising a Bilingual Child

From 7 Steps to Raising a Bilingual Child, by Naomi Steiner and Susan Hayes

1. Start little by little. Be aware that your child might resist an abrupt change of language.

2. Initially, you might be supporting understanding by translating, but the goal is to stop doing this little by little.

3. Start speaking the language during chosen times or activities when you're not rushed and there is plenty of extra time for explanations. For example, Sunday morning breakfasts might be a time when you feel relaxed. You don't want to put yourself in the situation of being stressed to get the kids out the door and teaching vocabulary. Then add on one activity at a time. For instance, add on bath time and teach the vocabulary words related to bath time.

4. Switch to reading simple books in the second language, simplifying and translating if needed. Books are a great way to teach new words.

5. Gradually extend the amount of time you speak the language and add on resources and activities that your kids can do on the computer or TV, for example.

6. Encourage your child to respond to you in the second language.

7. Don't give up! Remember, time is on your side.

Motherhood is like juggling. Womanhood is the same you just have to look a little prettier. I often have so much on my plate that I feel like a little busy bee flying around going nowhere. So, I moved from the Dc area cause I was tired of the snow/cold/winter. Now, that they are being bombarded by the biggest snowstorm --I am actually jealous. I could do with the rest. No driving anywhere, no commitments. I could talk more about this but I am off to take a break. Motherhood instructions would say--breaks are necessary for the sake of sanity--yours and theirs.

Today Daughter and I did two activities.
The first was inspired by one of my favorite blogs of all time "Confessions of a Homeschooler". She got paint chips colors and did an activity for her preschooler to categorize colors (with different shades). I got her idea and changed up a little. You can read about what she did here

http://confessionsofahomeschooler.blogspot.com/2009/10/paint-chip-phonics.html

For us I wrote the colors in Portuguese. I let her try doing the lines to separate the colors.

From Oops they forgot to give me a Manual

Then talked to my daughter about all the colors. We worked on our pronunciation.  It was so funny because when I was a kid I could not say "amarelo" (yellow) well..my daughter has the same issue. Everytime she would try saying "amarelo" it sounded like "amalelo" which sounds much like "yellow"... LOL! In this activity my goal was for her to learn/practice the colors in Portuguse.

From Oops they forgot to give me a Manual

We were having so much fun that we decided to count all the colors (as a total) and then each color and write down the number. So in the end we worked on gluing, counting, color, pronunciation, and line drawing. But more importantly we had fun! Motherhood instructions definitely would have a chapter on fun.

From Oops they forgot to give me a Manual

Another activity we did today, was to learn the location of Brasil and USA. Then we glued hearts in both places. So cute! So reflective of how I feel...hearts in both places.

From Oops they forgot to give me a Manual

Brazilian Preeschool--Escola dos Brasileirinhos

For about 7 months now some Brazilian moms (and one grandma) have been getting together to teach their kids Portuguese. We are all native Brazilians, some married to Americans some to fellow Brazilians...but all living in the USA. It has been such a fun journey! I am so thankful to God for putting such a special group of people together. We each have our own personalities and talents and we make a great mix. I feel so blessed that I wanted to share the love. So I am going to post here once a while about what we do in our group. But here is a first lesson for all of us-- If there was such a thing as a Motherhoood Manual---it would say--- raising kids is much easier with good friends!
Anyway, yesterday at our meeting we studied about FRIENDS or AMIGOS as we say in Portuguese. Monica read a wonderful story to the kids.It talks about how we learn things from animals and how they are our friends.
Here is the book she read (this book is in Spanish and English--not Portuguese-but she translated it so it worked perfectly)
My Friends/Mis Amigos

Then later, we sang a song about the ant (formiga)in the story. Part of the song said
"FUI AO MERCADO COMPRAR LIMÃO
E A FORMIGUINHA SUBIU NA MINHA MÃO
EU SACUDI, SACUDI, SACUDI
MAS A FORMIGUINHA NÃO PARAVA DE SUBIR"

This song is about someone going to the store to buy items and an ant biting a part of the body that rhymes with the items bought. Kids love it because they can move together with the song as the singer tries to get rid of the ants. Moms love it because it teaches parts of the body and names of food items. Perfect all around!
After singing, Creative Monica had the kids do a craft. They glued a picture of a lime (LIMÃO)then stamped their hand (MÃO) on the paper. The kids had to draw an ant (FORMIGA) moving up in the hand. It went so well with the song. The kids loved it! Unfortunately I forgot my camera...so pictures will start next week.

It has been a year and a half since my last post (or more...I send my math on a vacation this morning). The way this blog is going it will feel like the Moses walking in the desert. You know...40 years to get to where you are going. Anyway, much has happened in my life. I am going to try to be faithful here and blog. I guess at this point in my life I feel the lack of a manual in how to raise my kids to be bilingual and bi-literate. I am Brazilian (we speak Portuguese), but my kids were born in the USA so it would be great if they could not only speak Portuguese but also write/read in Portuguese. So, here I will post about this struggle that it is to teach a language in another culture. So, from now on I may post in both languages...or in only one. We will see how this goes. Another thing that I will be posting a lot of is about Christian Life. That is a big part of my life and I realize that not having a manual again has led me to not be as proactive as I would like with my kids. So, you now know my plan. It is February so I figure it is not a New Year's resolution anymore.... I bet that increases my changes of being sucessful!