October 2010

Having fun teaching the youngest learners!

I have been enjoying giving English lessons with the youngest kids at Vila Andrade this month.  They are great learners and are picking up things very quickly.  Their regular teacher told me they were doing a coloring activity one afternoon and asked her what color something was, the teacher said the color (in Portuguese), and the student said, “no, in English”!  I guess my color drills are having some affect! We are also learning about numbers and are starting the alphabet.

For Children’s Day this year, the Vila Andrade project invited a theatre troupe to come and present the ‘Wizard of Oz’ – which the kids just loved!

My students at the Lar Project continue to work hard.

Some of the kids from the home portion of the Lar Project.  The kids are excited to be getting a rabbit and fish pond soon on site!

September 2010

This September I started new classes at both the Lar and Vila Andrade projects. Even though it is close to the end of the school year here, I still had children asking for classes, so I re-arranged classes and schedules to make that happen. Now I have one group of new students two days a week at the Lar (I am testing to see how that works), and a new group at Vila Andrade one afternoon. I have also started giving mini-English lessons to the 'mini' students at Vila Andrade; I am going a different day of the week there and joining the 4-6 year old class and doing very basic teaching on colors, numbers, alphabet and their names.  They seem to enjoy it and I can hear them singing the 'Hello' song after I leave the room!

The kids at Vila Andrade had a drawing contest, and the teacher from Vilabyte technical training was called in to judge.  The winners got some new backpacks.

Students doing reinforcement exercises on the computer.

Chatting with some of the girls who live in Vila Andrade

The WorldVenture S. Brazil field had a retreat one weekend at Camp California, a partner ministry of ours. The director has planted over 100 banana trees here, which he turns around and sells.

Would you vote for this clown?  No, really, he was a clown and was running for office in this coming election. There are sadly a number of not so qualified candidates running for office this year.  Election day is October 3 for Brazil where the next president, governors, state and federal representatives and senators will be elected.  Two of the four presidential candidates are women, but the front runner is very radically left with a criminal past. Much prayer is being given to the future of this great country.