September 2009 of James 5.5, Sydney nearly 8 years
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September 10, 2009
Today we attended the open house at Sydney's elementary school. The second grade kids had all written a letter to their parents. We read Sydney's and it was a bit odd. We couldn't make out what the second half of the paper was saying. (The first part wasn't exactly easy with her phonetic spelling...no vowels). Later it hit me that it was Portuguese! She was so proud of it and I nearly cried when I told her how much that meant to me (I'm about to cry now as I type). The spelling was phonetic which if you're using English's sound system, looks nothing like actual Portuguese.
September 20, 2009
It's been amazing watching James change as he starts kindergarten. Language wise, it's totally different than when Sydney started. It was like pulling teeth to get her to speak Portuguese. With him, it's as if nothing has really changed. He has a real awareness of what language he's speaking. He likes to count in English then Portuguese then Spanish then French.
But his big love is math. My husband encourages him by giving little math problems at the dinner table or in the car. He can do quite a bit in his head for a 5 year old.
I have tried to get him to count in Portuguese when we're playing board games. He loves playing games and would do about anything to get someone to play with him (without ceasing...seriously!) I like Parcheesi especially because the numbers get quite high. If he's just playing with me, he'll count in Portuguese. Sometimes I have to get him started if he rolls and starts moving with the word "one"...so I just say, "um, dois..." and he takes it fm there. BUT if Sydney or Stephen even so much as enter the room, he counts in English. It feels like they come in and switch the light off. But I am just so glad he's trying and doing what he is.
I've tried doing some math problems like his dad does. If I do something like seis mais seis (6+6), he answers me and then complains that it's too easy. When I do harder problems, he gets the answer but then needs help saying it in Portuguese. From research I've done, multilingual people do math in whatever language they learned math in. I haven't been able to find exceptions to this in the literature or in my own study. It's as if math, from left side of the brain, takes the path of least resistance with the language it has to use. Or the code for counting and making equations only works with the code of the language that it learned from.
I'm trying not to push either of the kids too hard towards Portuguese, but I have to say, it's tempting to try to make a bilingual math boy wonder.
September 25, 2009
I read an interesting article in Newsweek. Stephen had read it and handed it to me with the caveat, "I'm not judging or anything, I just found it interesting." It was about a writer who wrote mainly about her son. When he got to be older, the kids at school teased him because his mom had said stuff about his "tiny penis" and such. He ended up being a really rebellious, drug-involved teenager and the mother also wrote about that. The article's writer questioned whether the mother had a right to tell her son's story. It is, after all, his and not hers. I think what I do is quite different because I'm discussing their linguistic development.
Oh, Vorakarn may work in Rio this summer. Sounds like the August trip we've batted around really will pan out. I even heard Stephen telling his mom (that's when I know it's real) and she was so great! She offered time in their timeshare places in Brazil. I looked it up and there are like 90! They aren't the type of places we'd normally (touristy, high rise...we usually go for pousadas (B & Bs) and such where you get to know the locals, but hey, the price sounds right. She is a very generous woman.
September 27, 2009
Toda
