Saturday, September 25, 2010

Kids and Portuguese

Dora has a friend from school over right now for a play date. They are playing this clapping, rhythm game in Portuguese and Dora knows all the words. This is exactly the kind of thing I hoped for--maybe I can catch it on camera...

Beatrice has a Barbie computer (in English) and I was trying to work with her today because she's been a little slow learning her letters. I was asking her to find the "Q" and she was having a hard time. I finally showed her and she said "key", which I realized is "Q" pronounced in Portuguese. Then I asked her to identify some other letters, and she was doing it in Portuguese. Go figure.

It's been over six months now, so I think that our kids are still doing remarkably well with the language acquisition. We felt like our biggest goal was for them to learn the language, and it's happening! We're still trying to find a tutor for Dora. For some reason, it's hard to find a qualified Portuguese teachers that don't overcharge and are available to come to our house in the mornings. But I'm still looking!

Off to hang out with some American friends and eat eggplant sandwiches...

3 comments:

  1. american friends who eat eggplant sandwiches, why am i not in BH! children are so lucky. i am already happy for my kids that don't exist yet who get to grow up learning two languages :)

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  2. hey--get on twitter, there's a ton of the expat-in-brazil bloggers on and it's strange because it's actually like having conversations..and lots of ACTUAL brazilians too :P

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  3. Good luck to them! I know how it is sometimes, even though my boys were born and are being raised here. My youngest is a late talked as was my oldest. But once my oldest got the hang of the difference, he just kept on going at full speed. I´m hoping my youngest will do the same. As my ped says, it´s double the vocab, double the work, double the time, and then it sticks and they end up passing up the other students. Go figure. lol

    btw, my ex moved to the states at 8 yrs old not speaking a word of English. After a couple of difficult years, he became perfectly fluent in both Spanish and English. They say if they learn before 8 years old, they´ll speak like a native

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