Week 3: Party preparations start
Hello everyone, again apologies for the lack of posting over the last few weeks, the internet has been down at the convent so it has been difficult to access the blog.
Week 3 the children began preparations for the upcoming party in July. As i said in the last blog they have already started practicing the dance they will be performing, which is a traditional Brazilian dance. However they were also starting to make decorations for the party as well. To make the decorations they have been using a variety of recyled materials, such as shop advertisements, plastic mags and magazines. they have been attaching these to long metres of string to make great colourful banners that will look great at the party.
In the class room we were teaching food this week and trying to link this in with the shopping topic from previous weeks. In order to combine the topics we designed a worksheet, which Joe spent sometime doing a detailed drawing of a street of shops. It went down well and gave the children a good visual aid to keep in their work folders.
In our time outside the classroom we went to have our first glimspe at sugar loaf up close. Beth took us there for a walk around the bottom, she showed us the nice beach (red beach) and also showed us the Urca neighbourhood on the way back. Urca is a lovely leafy part of the city with great views of the harbour. If your bearings are good you can also make out where Santa Teresa is up on the hill across the bay. (more from our trip up Sugar Loaf in week 5!)
Another day we decided to get a bit of culture by visiting the Museu do Indio to learn a bit about the indigenous tribes that were living in Brazil before the Portuguese and subsequent settlers arrived. Unfortunately it was all in Portuguese so we couldn´t really understand most of it, but there were a few videos which showed pottery being made in the traditional style that were really interesting.
As we were in full tourist mode and needed more of a fix of local history (albeit, more recent history) we decided to walk to Copacanbana fort, built in 1914 as the portuguese main defence of Rio. As you approach the fort there seems to be very little to look at from the bay, but as you enter the grounds the verge that the fort is built into is peppered with ancient cannons of varying degrees of size and sophistication. I was amazed at the craftmanship that had obviously gone into these old machines, Polly on the otherhand, was a little less excited, but i think it might be a boy thing. Inside the fort itself, there was a network of tunnels that lead to huge gun torrets, engine rooms, dormatorys, offices where defence was dicussed and huge stores full of missiles, all incased within a 12 metre thick wall! i thought it was thouroughly impressive and topped off with fantastic views along the coastline.
Polly and Joe xx
September 4th, 2009 at 03:16 am
[…] However they were also starting to make decorations for the party as well. To make the decorations they have been using a variety of recyled materials, such as shop advertisements, plastic mags and magazines. they have been attaching …Page 2 […]