APAE and portuguese lessons

I had my first day of volunteering at APAE, the special needs school, yesterday. My class is small with only 3 kids every day because they only have one teacher. They have a total of 7 kids in the class, and they circulate so they all come to class at least 2 times a week. I´m going back today to meet all of the other kids and therefore decide what days I want to go back. Really though, I like the kids in other classes more. We went to another class to have singing time together and there was this adorable downs girl who wanted all of my attention and when I gave attention to other kids she would get jealous and either hit some kid or wedge herself in somehow. There was another little boy named Duda that was really scared of climbing around on the monkey bars, but would do it all by himself if he knew i was watching him and close by. He was also cute because he spoke really clearly and was so preocupied with keeping me close by that he would always look over at me and say "I need you to do this with me" and so basically I just had to keep an eye on him and let him know i was there by lightly touching his back or something. It was a little frustrating though, because the teachers weren´t really helping facilitate play that much, and I felt like I was the one working far more than the teachers. Nevertheless, I had a great time, and the teachers are all ears for hearing new ideas and songs that they want to translate into portuguese. We´ll see how it goes.

I also just had my first "portuguese lesson"... and it went well. I think its going to help just to have someone sit with me and organize my thoughts about the language and have insight from someone who speaks portuguese and also english to help drive away any doubts. Its also going to help me to motivate myself to really focus on my word choice, memorization of tenses, etc.

Anyways, I should go because its almost noon and tia likes to have lunch right at noon...

ate logo,
Ana