This year our Easter season was followed by some mixed feelings when one parent asked me not to mention the word Easter in one of our classes. We normally do a class pretty low key, more towards bunnies, eggs and egg hunt, but we do have Happy Easter in all the coloring pages and her request made me think about how people have a more exclusive than inclusive mentality. It is about excluding Christian values, so the other values are respected and uplifted. Sounds like double standard to me. As a Christian, I feel insulted, as a business owner, I feel my program and its content, since it is announced beforehand, prior to enrollment, should not be subject to change for whatever reason. I believe all religions are important and should be respected, I also believe God does not have a religion and he should be the center of any and every faith.
I had to share what happened this year, which has never happened before, because I believe foreign languages should express the culture of language learned and Spanish and Christians walk hand in hand, there is no denying it!
My comments don’t have any intention to offend any of clients which are not Christians, they do offer my perspective on this issue, though. Now let’s get to the important topic! Easter!
Happy Easter – Feliz Pascua
We started with flashcards, showing pictures and words in most of our classes in South Jersey:
We also Played the Carrot Baseball, children had to use my oversized carrot to hit the eggs on the other side of the room saying just color, huevos + color or Yo veo un huevo amarillo, depending on level.
We colored a page with bunnies in some classes and we wrote a letter to a friend saying what we like about Easter using vocabulary and me gusta…
We played domino, they loved it!
We showed this video: Caramelo!
We absolutely had a blast looking for matches of Easter words and placing them in the canasta!
Hope you enjoyed our class and you use some of the activities at home or in your classroom!
This post is dedicated to all the moms who read and support our efforts to bring foreign languages into their homes and enable us to do that!
Being a multilingual mom has been a challenge for me and has proven to also be very rewarding at the same time. I have been walking my son through learning two languages while building up his native language and some of my efforts have being successful, others not so….Mother’s day should be celebrated all year , but I try to bring a special meaning at this time of the year! I hope you try and enjoy some of my suggestions!!!
My son loves music, so we always hear music in Spanish and Portuguese….I still laugh when I hear him sing, tomo guarana, such de caju, goiabada para sobremesa!!! He blasts this song out on his iPod
We also read some books, I try to read some of the books I am using in my classes and some in Portuguese as well!
We play his favorite game: mela mela tin, where we rub our noses agains it each other and then bang heads ( softly) sometimes he prefers not so softly, LOL, boys! I make ovinho ( eggs for breakfast) on Saturday and he and daddy cook on Sunday for me!
He likes rock and fast paced music, so I like showing him some j-lo and Ricky Martin songs and dancing around the house, have not done that this week! And reading is a must!
I read this one last night, Quiero a mi mama porque:
Think about Easter in South America is to think about food! Thinking back on so many Easter meals at my parent’s home! The most fun part was not the egg! In Brazil, they are ginormous! LOL Check it out!
It was all about sitting and eating ALL day! O dia todo! My family makes seafood dishes and yummy appetizers and desserts! My favorites listed under my pinterest account:
http://pinterest.com/easylearn/food/
Moqueca de Camarao ( shrimp stew), Farofa de manteiga (Cassava Flour with butter and onions and eggs), Vatapa ( bread pudding made from bread, cashews, dried shrimp and other ingredients), white rice and more! Sooo good! Tao bom!
Some good words for Easter in Portuguese: Pascoa (Easter), Feliz Pascoa (Happy Easter), Ovo ( Egg), Chocolate ( chocolate), Cesta ( basket)
The best memories are all the aromas coming from my mom’s kitchen, my dad’s jokes and all the talk around the table! After all, Easter means giving and looking back, that is what ours was all about!
Today I started my mission to post some of my mom’s favorite recipes and some Spanish and Italian recipes. I promise I will not post things that were incorporated to the American Cuisine! Please try my recipes and tell me what you and your family said about it!
Bolinhos de Carne a Baiana – Brazilian Meatballs
Ingredients:
1 pound of ground beef
1 small onion
black pepper and cumin (depends on how much you like, I put a little bit of each)
salt
3 eggs
bread crumbs
1 cup of flour
Mix ground beef, chopped onion, cumin, pepper, salt and 1 egg and place in the fridge for 2 hours. Make small balls and pass in the flour, egg, then bread crumbs and place in a skillet with hot oil, enough to cover the meatballs. Cook until brown. Serve on top of spaghetti or rice. Please no tomato sauce. Brazilians usually eat that on top of white rice, but my family likes it with pasta cooked sauteed on butter.
This time of the year brings the best memories of my childhood. When my mom used to stay hours in the kitchen preparing the seafood dishes for Easter! My dad would spend hours stirring Vatapá, Camarão, arroz branco, farofinha…..makes my mouth water. Those sounds and smells still surround me when Easter times come, so I try to make this a special time for my son as well…bringing some of the traditions like purchasing the one pound Easter Egg at the Brazilian store….making sea food on good Friday and working on a two hour sweet bread which allows me to share some of my memories with him.
If you wish to share some traditions with your child or use some interesting materials in the classroom, I would suggest:
Use bunny songs which can be found in YouTube:
De olhos vermelhos or Coelhinho da Páscoa, words for the songs can also be found online
Memory game with Easter vocabulary like, coelho, cesta, ovos, chocolate, colorante, páscoa
Print easter egg from online free coloring pages and cut them in three parts, have the children put pieces of the eggs together, this can also be used to review colors on the eggs.
A lot of homeschooling parents and teachers e-mailed us, asking for materials to use on Easter. I have couple ideas to share, which can be used in any foreign language class:
1)Plastic egg decoration- children will glue decorations they colored on the eggs and you will review or teach Spanish colors while doing that
2)Hide and seek, children will take turn counting(numbers) and try to find students.
3)Word egg hunt- I hide eggs and words/candy seeing during the month, they will hunt for eggs, but they will only get the candy if they can tell me what that word is.
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