So my days follow a pretty regular pattern now. I get up about 8:30, have breakfast, watch cartoons and play with Helena, go online, read, have lunch, prepare for class, have tea, go to church and teach, have supper and go to bed. Preparing for class usually takes as long, if not longer than actually giving it. I teach from 6 until 8 (approxiamately).
Wednesday's class focused on dates and times and then we did a short section on food. I don't envy those born on the 30th as this is particularly hard for them to say. I also told them the rhyme "Monday's child is fair of face..."* which they found hilarious.
Thursday's class was on the present continuous tense - though I'm not sure I managed to convey this to them! There's no whiteboard at the church, but I got a roll of wallpaper ad stuck some up on the wall with masking tape and began to draw a park. We labelled things such as trees or flowers as we went along to improve vocabulary. Then I drew a little stick figure jumping next to a tree. I labelled it "Bella"**. Then I wrote "It's twelve o'clock and I am next to the tree, jumping". I got each of the students to come up in turn and draw themselves into the scene and say where they were and what they were doing. I've taken a photograph of the finished scene and will try and upload it this afternoon. We had quite a variety of actions by the end - singing, dancing, talking, laughing, smiling, drinking etc.
After this we played "odd-one-out" with the food words we had learnt the day before. I would write up "mushroom, onion, carrot, pork" and they had to work out what each one meant before deciding that pork was the odd one because the others were vegetables.
Finally we had a very exciting team game where I wrote numbers up on the board and called them out, a player from each team had a coloured pen and the first to circle the correct figure in their team's colourp to em got a point - it was all very exciting for them! Their was lots of shouting and good-natured squabbling over disputed points!
At home Helena's three favourite games recently are to sit on my lap, facing me and undo and do up a button on my shirt, over and over again! She's very independant and loves to be able to do things for herself. The second is to come up to me with a teddy behind her back and say "close you eyes, I have a present for you" (in Portuguese obviously) and then shout "ta-da!" and produce said toy. Finally, whenever I'm on skype she loves to come and say "oi" (hi) to whoever I'm speaking to, which is really rather sweet. If you should happen to be on the receiving end of this, the correct response is "oi, tudo bem?" (pronounced "oi, too-do beng?").
That's all for now - I need to prepare tonight's lesson.
Love xx
*"Monday's child is fair of face
Tuesday's child is full of grace
Wednesday's child is full of woe
Thursday's child has far to go
Friday's child is loving and giving
Saturday's child works hard for a living
And the child that is born on the Sabbath day
Is bonny, blithe, good and gay"
**I'm sure I've explained this before, but just in case - "ela" in Portuguese means "she" so I go by the name Bella here.
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