Starting Letter Fun

From time to time Cutlet likes pulling out an activity idea book I've got called Learning FUNdamentals (by Colin Rose) and wants to do something new.
On this day, he picked one that had to do with identifying objects that begin with a particular letter (sound).

So I grabbed a few items from around the room... items starting with /P/ and items starting with /B/. I randomly asked him, "Grab something that starts with..." And he would repeat the sound over and over, looking at the objects until he identified one.

Items displayed: pillow, paper, ball, bottle, panda, bag, book, blanket, penguin

Quick and easy! He enjoyed it and felt very proud of himself too :-)

Spanish Immersion, Morning 1

Today I started "Spanish ONLY" ... up until lunch anyway. 

During weekdays my kids (4 & 2) have "preschool" with a Peruvian gal, K, who comes to our house and plays with them and does learning activities while Hubby and I do ministry projects. She mostly speaks to them in Spanish, but sometimes my 4yo gets frustrated because he doesn't understand, so she'll give him a break and speak to him in English. Now that we're getting closer and closer to our departure from Peru, I'm wanting to start implementing more Spanish into our home life, so I spoke with K about working with me on this. I told her that even Hubby & I will be using Spanish with the kids in the AM in order to make it only Spanish across the board. I've explained this change to my 4yo so he won't be caught off-guard. My 2yo is much more go-with-the-flow. It seems she doesn't even realize there's a difference between me speaking Spanish or English to her. She responds equally and never shows frustration.

Well so I got up this morning to a bare-bottomed Cutlet telling me he'd peed the bed (which he rarely does anymore!) ... and THIS is how I'm gonna start our first Spanish only morning??? So I didn't say anything... just got up and went to take a look at the damage. I finally just picked him up and sat him on my lap and reminded him that we were gonna be speaking Spanish today. After that, I mustered up my gumption and just started in, albeit somewhat timidly... Although it was after 7AM and K would be here around 8, he wanted to lay back down for a bit, so I changed his pajamas and, to curb the crankiness he was emitting, I relented to his wishes. I didn't want his morning to be more difficult than it was already starting out to be. About 5-10 minutes later, he gets up happily and is ready to put his regular clothes on. Yay!


Well I think the morning went quite well. No fusses from Cutlet about me speaking Spanish... and definitely no attitude from Lively... she takes things in stride. I have to say that at this point I am very glad I've got K coming every weekday morning because I really don't know how I could handle 4-5 hours of only Spanish with my sweet little ones. I did notice that as I was in and out of the house during the morning, speaking Spanish to them just felt "strange". Hubby had the same sentiments. How can we do this?!? English is how we can best express our feelings and love and silliness with them! Honestly we missed that closeness. I don't want to give up yet though because this trial deserves a good test run... and I hear that it starts feeling more "normal" as days go by...

Spanish... "Naturally"

As mentioned under the 'My Family' tab, we are moving back to the USA in December... and although we are not officially homeschooling yet, I feel it is my duty (and would be a disservice otherwise) to make sure my 2 wee ones continue to be surrounded with the Spanish language. Up until now, I've just let the kids take in the language outside of our home by native speakers; however, it's about time for me to step up to the plate and take charge of this area myself. And although I've been exposed to, formally studied or have taught the Spanish language for around half of my life (!!!), I still have doubts about how effective I can be in successfully transferring this knowledge to my two little ones because I am not a native speaker... Get a grip, right?!?

OK, so I'm the kind of person who takes her time in making decisions and if I'm going to do something, I want to do a good job. I also need to have a plan (at least to get me started... then I can change things up a bit once I get going and see how things work in real life!) So I've done some searches on Amazon and ebay for Spanish resources to incorporate into our home education in the near future... books, poems, nursery rhymes, folk songs...

Also I've been doing a bit of Q&A with some folks online to gain some insight into how they go about teaching a foreign language in a natural context, no curriculum. I used the Discussion Forum at Simply Charlotte Mason (SCM) and posed this question. I got some really helpful responses. Thanks to Richele at Barefoot Voyage for a glimpse into her life, teaching her boys Russian as a non-native speaker. She schools in English until around noon, then the rest of the day primarily uses Russian. In addition, she incorporates Russian folktales, cartoons, audio stories and music throughout their daily life.

Another SCM member known as missingtheshire has taught her daughters German as a non-native speaker. They are now in high school and using a German curriculum, but when they were small, she just used everyday conversation with them and taught them the names of common objects in the house. Once they could read, she labeled items all over the house for them to see. In addition, she reminded me that finding someone to practice with (for myself as well as for them!) is a great supplement to keeping language skills honed.

I have also conversed a little bit with Silvia at Homeschooling in a Bilingual Home . Silvia, who is Spanish, told me from her own experience:

My daughters didn't speak much Spanish two years ago (and they are now six and almost four). I was devastated because when we went to Spain last time my oldest, four at the time, didn't have much Spanish, the little one had some words in Spanish and a great vocabulary at two. But now they seem to be flourishing in Spanish...

Silvia speaks to her girls in Spanish most of the day and incorporates additional opportunities to interact with each other, such as reading and hanging out with other Spanish-speaking families. She admits though, that oftentimes their homeschooling sessions are a mixture of both languages and that is totally fine. She knows that as they continue to grow and learn together, the girls will eventually be equally as strong in Spanish as in English.
 
Amy at Fisher Academy International Teaching Home has also been helpful in giving me her two-cents on the matter, as she's quite a seasoned missionary in Peru with 5 kids who are also acquiring Spanish as they all minister to and fellowship with Spanish-speakers. She states:

We'd been here for several years and [my kids'] Spanish was really quite sketchy.  Even though they heard it spoken, they would not speak (couldn't really). ... Honestly, my kids didn't hardly learn a speck of Spanish until they had Spanish speaking friends.  

In addition to echoing what others have already mentioned, Amy also tells me that they have family Bible time (in Spanish) together in the mornings, and afterward each child takes a turn in narrating back in Spanish! Of course this requires a greater command of the spoken language, but what a great goal!


Just recently I've come across another blog dedicated to bilingualism: MommyMaestra. The blog author, Monica, is a Latina homeschooler and has lots of great resources and links to other useful sites and blogs as well. Through her blog I found the Blogging Carnival on Bilingualism hosted by Letizia, an Italian, at Bilingual for Fun, which led me to realize just how many other moms and dads are dedicated to bringing up their children bilingually. 

In fact, just recently I encountered a gringo (white) family here on a 5-month teaching assignment. The husband grew up speaking Spanish since about the age of 5, and after he and his wife had their first child (now 5), he began only speaking Spanish to her. Now they have a son (2) and speaking Spanish to his children is automatic now after these 5 years. This is another motivator to me that in order for bilingualism to occur, I've got to get over the hump of that "unnatural" feeling, and after a few days/weeks/months, it will come to feel more natural that I speak Spanish with my children. (the habit of discipline on my part!)

So I wanted to share a really cool contribution by Letizia, entitled 8 reasons why you don’t have to be a native speaker to teach your child a language. Wow! This is the shot in the arm I was needing! Below are highlighted those 8 reasons she mentioned. You can go over to her blog to read up on the elaboration of those reasons if this piques your interest a bit :-)

1. Language is a living organism
2. There's not such a thing as a pure accent
3. Languages are a tool to communicate
4. You can and should provide multiple input for the second language
5. Children have an impressive ability to incorporate input from different sources
6. This might be the only chance at hand
7. Whatever your knowledge of the second language you can find the right approach for you and your family
8. If you really want it, you'll make it

 And so, although I've still got a few reservations as to how effective I can be, I'm more determined to face my fears head-on. I am also more aware now that there is a very experienced (and LARGE) community of dedicated parents in the world who are committed to the task of interacting with their children in a foreign language on a daily basis. Thank you to the select few that I've happened upon. You've been an inspiration! 

Our Jungle Apple Tree

The tree is in our front yard and is a great shade tree!

The pomarosa, or mamey (mah-may), as it's called in the jungle area of Peru, is something we had never heard of before until we moved here. The most common name is the Malay Apple due to the presumption that this fruit originated from Malaysia. After researching a little, it appears that this fruit is strictly tropical (not even being able to produce fruit in California or Florida) and is found all over the world with a number of different names.

Right now we are enjoying the sweet, juicy goodness of this interesting fruit, which is in the Myrtle family. It is a pear-shaped piece with very thin, deep red skin, and soft, white flesh you can easily sink your teeth into. It tastes somewhat like a pear... with a hint of floral essence. Yum.

And as you can also see, the tree itself is quite attractive with amazingly bright hot pink flowers.  The petals are stick-like and when they fall, the sheer quantity of them makes a beautiful natural carpet on the ground.

Quick Mexican Cheese Enchiladas

Alright, so I don't know if this looks appetizing to you or not, but it was really super delicious! While I was preparing it I realized that while I thought I'd made this before, it was actually a new recipe for us. And that's always cause for concern around here because Hubby is not a fan of my experiments! Anyway, I know he loves cheese enchiladas, so I figured I couldn't be too far away from an enjoyable meal. (and how can you ever go wrong with LOTS of cheese?!?) 

So I'm posting this meal because I was incredibly surprised at how quick and EASY this was and thought of all you busy folks (homeschoolers or not!). We are in the midst of getting our furniture ready to ship back to the States, and I was running around helping Hubby. Time was getting away from me and I really didn't know if I could pull this nice, hearty meal off by lunchtime. I was almost resigned to just making PB&J, but I figured we needed something more substantial to keep our energy level up.

Anyway, for all of you who have easy access to those American/Tex-Mex staples, such as tortillas, cream of chicken soup and sour cream, this should be very easy. Here in the Peruvian jungle area we have none of these things available ready-made. So if we want it, we have to home-make it! Fortunately, I had a batch of cream of chicken soup in the freezer, a small can of crema de leche, which I mix with about a tablespoon of vinegar to make sour cream, and I'd had my maid make a batch of flour tortillas the week before. So I was good to go! (By the way, I halved this recipe and it turned out just right for our small family). Oh, also we don't have green chili peppers here. We have a yellow pepper, and that is what I used. 

I found this recipe at Food.com...

Ingredients

12 flour (or corn) tortillas

1/2 pound to 1 pound cheddar cheese (we can't get cheddar here, so I used Edam)

Sauce

8 oz. sour cream

4 oz. chopped green chili peppers

4-6 green onions, chopped (including 2 or 3 inches of the stem)

1 (8 oz.) can cream of chicken soup

1/2 cup enchilada sauce (which we can't get here either! Below find a quick recipe for this*)

Garnish

salsa

sour cream

green onion

Directions:

1. For sauce, combine sour cream, peppers, green onions, soup and enchilada sauce.

2. Spread a thin layer of the sauce in the bottom of a 9x13 baking pan.

3. Place a small amount of grated cheese in each tortilla, reserving some for the topping. Roll up and place seam side down in the baking dish. Pour on remaining sauce, covering all tortillas.

4. Sprinkle top with more cheese and bake at 400 degrees for 20-30 minutes til cheese is bubbly.

*Enchilada Sauce Recipe

Put a sauce pan on a medium-heat burner and mix together:

4 T corn oil

6 T flour

1 1/2 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp salt

3 T chili powder

1/8 tsp red pepper

3/4 tsp garlic powder

My total prep time was just under half an hour and I just popped it into a preheated oven. When we sat down to lunch, Hubby asked, "Did you just make this?" (read: impressed with how quickly I put a hot meal on the table with everything else I was doing). "It's pretty good!" 

...I'll take that as a sign that it can become a regular in our menu rotation now :-)

Scripture Memory

This is one thing I wish I were better at. I remember back when I was a kid and my mom came up with a list of Bible verses we were going to memorize during one summer, but I don't remember what ever happened during the course of those school-less days... I'm the type of person who needs structure, lists and goals, and I thrive under the auspices of a coach and cheerleader to help me get the job done!

As I was perusing the Simply Charlotte Mason website, I came across the Scripture Memory System and read a few reviews. I am impressed at how it works, and I was also pleased to see that even the wee ones can start in on this right away! My ds is 4 years old, and even though we aren't officially homeschooling yet, this is something we can begin NOW and develop into a good habit (as a family even). And this will be one less new thing to introduce. I want my kids to begin to hide the Word of God in their hearts and let the work of the Holy Spirit begin to mold their hearts and minds.

We just started about 3 weeks ago. Since we were beginning again in the Jesus Storybook Bible, I decided to delve deeper into the story of Creation (see earlier post on our Creation lapbook). In addition, I figured this would be a good place to start with memorizing an easy Bible verse. So I am pleased to announce that Cutlet knows by heart:

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Genesis 1:1

Now we are working on:

For God so loved the world, that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever

believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

John 3:16

Last night Prince Charming & I delved into the Bible, looking for more verses to teach Cutlet as he begins mastering verse after verse. We came up with about 20 or so (for now!), including longer passages like Psalm 23.

We look forward to the upcoming days, months and years... hopefully being able to look back on these precious times with satisfaction of having accomplished what we set out to do ... and not wondering whatever happened during the course of those school-less days.