September

I can´t believe I´ve been here a month already...time sure does fly....especially since we´ve been SUPER busy here. Since my last blog, we travelled to Londrina, for a weekend, to see a friend, spent another weekend on a very remote farm, and continued to do al lot of things at the program and with capoeira.

Two weeks ago I started teaching a computer class to the students. I chose five students from each the morning and afternoon groups. I eventually want all the kids to take this course, but can´t do more than a few students at a time given the little resources/computers we have. Each student will take three classes with me. I start them off easy the first class bu having them type out a letter to someone in the U.S. This activity is to help them learn how to type and form complete sentences (which, believe me....it´s definately a challenge for most of them!) I realized after this activity that most of these kids don´t know when or where to use punctuation and many don´t even know what a complete sentence is! The second class, I teach them how to change the font, color, and style of writing for their letters. After that, I let them playing a typing game to continue helping them with that skill. The last class will be focused on copying and pasting items. I am going to have them search a famous person on Google and then have them copy a paragraph of information about that person and paste it onto a word document. They will then need to type that exact paragraph themselves and copy and paste a picture of that person, too. The whole point of the course is to get them practising their typing and computer navigating skills. So far everything seems to be going well and they enjoy it, too!

The next thing I started at the project was math practice. I gave every single PETI student a math worksheet to complete to assess their skillls. The younger students received a 21 question addition sheet and the older students completed a 100 question simple multiplication paper. After grading and categorizing them, I found that many of the students seem to know their math facts, but I plan on using flash cards and games to continue to help them. A lot of the kids actually had to use their fingers or make tallies to complete the questions, so I would like to make time every day to work on-on-one with some of them. All in all, they did very well and I´m very proud of them. I can´t wait to kick off another new portion of the project!

Next to all that, we had a capoeira demostration this past Sunday, in Telemaco. It was culture week and we brought some of our dedicated students here to participate in the festival. They loved being here with us and being apart of something so important! I enjoyed it too, but I realized that I need to start training more on my own if I want to get better this year!

Katie and I have both been sick on and off. I still blame the silly weather for that! One day it´s hotter than can be and the next day it´s cold and rainy....:( I am trying to get over a cold right now and want to do it quickly, because we will be travelling to Santa Catarina (another state) this weekend for a capoeira demonstration.

The last thing I am excited to post about is the family prayer nights I´ve been apart of here at Lourival´s house. Every Tuesday night, they invite all of their family memebers here to pray for an hour. It is very beautiful and I´m so grateful that I get to be apart of it. if anyone has an special intentions you would like us to pray for, please let me know! God bless you and have a great week!

"If you make the Lord your refuge, if you make the Most High your shelter, no evil will conquer you." Psalm 91;9-10