The appropriate theme for this week has to be "a minhoca" (pronounced mean-yock-uh), which means "the earthworm" in English. There must be something about earthworms, maybe their squishiness or sliminess, that makes kids go crazy about them. They also have an important role in garden health, so it's a great opportunity to implement a lesson for the kids. That being said, the word "earthworm" is phonetically difficult to pronounce if you haven't grown up speaking with "th's" and "r's". When we were in the classroom doing our Portuguese-English activity, this was by far the word we worked on the most. I got some "worf-terms" and some "erd-ferns" and mostly "irf-urms," but the effort was there and that's what we were looking for! Here are a few pictures of our duo-language activity:
Even though I had some rough spots with my Portuguese during our activities, the kids didn't seem to mind and understood that I was learning just like them. Some of them surprised me because they actually knew a little English. When I asked them how they learned it, I got answers like video games, movies, and one girl even said from her Portuguese-English dictionary! Overall, the kids were more than excited to learn new words, and I thoroughly enjoyed teaching them. Awesomely exhausting days:)
I am now living in a different home and getting a completely different Brazilian experience. Bruno's place was more like a dorm room because they are all still going to school. Raquel, my new host, lives with her parents and her sister, and now me! So I have experienced an apartment and a house, college students and a family. Raquel's family loves Christmas, and they already have all their decorations up! It has definitely made me excited for Christmas as well.
Raquel's mom is a high school biology teacher, and she took me to Curitiba's Natural History Museum with her students one night, which was good practice for my Portuguese. I also got to tag along to Raquel's friend's birthday party and speak English with a few people! Then they took me to this park on Saturday that I can't remember the name of. But who would have thought this would be in the middle of a city as big as Curitiba! I suppose it's the same concept as what I found in Houston this summer, but I was surprised nonetheless. And this park had a sort of treehouse/tower thing!
So the ending to this blog will be the other reason why "a minhoca" is the title for this week. I was excited to find that Raquel had "Finding Nemo" in Portuguese because I could practice my Portuguese with a story line that I already knew. When it came to Nemo's naming ceremony in the fish tank, I was curious as to how they were going to translate "Shark Bait" into Portuguese. As I'm sure you've guessed, they call him "Minhoca" (which is earthworm), and I just thought this was hilarious! I think that's pretty creative considering the direct translation would be something along the lines of "tubarão isca," and that just doesn't sound as cool. A toast to all the minhoca's out there for making this a fun week!
Comments