Language Homeschool in action with “Sopa” by Palavra Cantada
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The other day, we played with the homeschool material to accompany the song “O que que tem na sopa do neném” or short “Sopa”. You can get it on my shop. I want to walk you through what we did so that you get a feel for what’s doable.
If you are new to the song, it’s been written and played by Palavra Cantada - a Brazilian duo who creates unique songs for children to enjoy music, learn the language, and experience Brazilian culture. This is the song from their YouTube channel. Go check them out, we are playing their music regularly over here.
How we used the educational material for “Sopa” in our Portuguese language homeschool session
When I planned the language homeschool session, I was short on wooden sticks, so I taped the pictures onto pipe cleaners, as I had plenty of those. It makes the parts a bit more wobbly and shaky, and it added some extra sensational input.
I laid out the printed and prepared material together with our Toniebox and the Creative Tonie that contains the song. During the homeschool session, I first introduced what we are going to do and asked if our son was interested in doing that. So, we played the song first, when he already had a first pass at identifying and pointing at the items. After the first round of the song, we paused and looked at each “soup ingredient” separately first before continuing. Then, we played the song again, and now our son would pick the mentioned item during the song. I paused a bit if the search took a bit longer.
After that, our son was super excited to go back to the items and make his own soup of things he likes the most. So we went through talking about which ingredients he likes and which he doesn’t.
It was a short little fun music and language session and throughout the rest of the day, both of us had the song stuck in our heads. One of us would randomly start singing the song all afternoon :)
Some Learnings and Best Practices:
Specific language sessions can in fact be concise and leave impact
Be ready to play the song multiple times, and stop throughout the song, if you want to give your child time to find the matching items while the music plays.
Allow for creative play, and be ready to “let go”. The “own soup” part wasn’t planned but was a fantastic addition.
Next time, I would actually provide a wooden spoon to give more haptic input in making a soup.
Get the language homeschool material here and let us know what soup you were making!
