Portuguese

This is a sensitive topic for me. I do want my kids to speak Portuguese. I need to pick up the pace and I will once the piano recital is out of the way.

What motivated this post is what I have observed recently. My kids love music- they love to listen, to sing and to dance, the entire music experience. I first won them with Galinha Pintadinha's songs

, then cartoon movies (Disney's Joao e pe de feijao) and some books that I found online (Joao e pe de jeijao-Girasol) and read on my Kindle to them, as well as books which I simply have translated to Portuguese and books that I have purchased which are in Portuguese. I have all the materials, but I do not have the time for a full immersion (plus Bulgarian and English are both important now).  So, I settled for the next best thing -spend at least 15 minutes every night speaking, reading, singing in Portuguese.

This strategy works well. The kids know a lot of words, some sentences and a lot of songs. Ballet girl, especially, is willing to experiment. Sunlight boy too, to an extent. Tonight, for example, we sang: O sapo nao lava o pe, Joaninha Formosa, Dona Aranha and Coelinho da Pascoa; we read one simple book about bichos/bugs-bichos no quintal (first grade reader that has brilliant pictures and which I translated myself).