Brazil Resources and Printables

Looking for ways to teach your kids about Brazil?

Check out these printables from Homeschool Creations.  They are FREE!

Homeschool Creations also has a great post with a lesson plan for how to study Brazil in a homeschool family!

You can also check out my post with activities about Brazil here.

The National Geographic Kids Brazil page has lots more info, too.

Need some ideas for books about Brazil? Here are some links:

Missionary Kid Stories by [Brannon, Jennifer]           

 

     

     

      

 

These are only a few of the books available.  You don’t have to spend a fortune either…check out your local library to find free books and resources to check out!

 

(This post contains some affiliate links.  If you click on some links and make a purchase, familiesformissions.com may receive a small compensation.)

 

 

Valentine’s Day Around the World

Just like other holidays, Valentine’s Day is celebrated in different ways around the world.

Growing up in Mexico, we celebrated the “Day of Love and Friendship” on February 14th. On this day, it is common for dating or married couples to go out together to eat or for coffee. Street vendors sell clumps of roses or heart-shaped balloons at many street corners. One of my favorite things about Valentine’s Day is Mexico is the importance of friendship. This is not just a holiday for school kids and couples. Many friends exchange gifts or give flowers to each other, too. It truly is a day for love AND friendship.

In the Philippines, people celebrate much like we do in the US, but there is also a big trend to have huge weddings with many people all getting married at once on February 14th. These weddings take place in public places and can include hundreds of couples. Sometimes these are sponsored by the government as a public service.

(Photo from skitterphoto.com)

In Brazil, many people skip celebrating on February 14th and decide to celebrate on June 12th instead. This is the “Dia dos Namorados” or “Lover’s Day”, and they exchange gifts and eat together. Families and friends also can get together to celebrate as well.

While in most countries it is the women that receive gifts, in Japan and South Korea the women give gifts to the men on Valentine’s Day. The men can then respond in kind on March 14th, when it is their turn to shower the women with gifts. I think this sounds like fun!

In South Africa, women wear the name of the man they are interested in on a heart on their sleeve. This stems from an ancient Roman festival, but this could be a really fun way for a guy to find out which girl has a crush on him!

Do you love chocolate? Maybe you’ll want to visit Ghana on February 14th. It is National Chocolate Day there and you can find many chocolate items and meals prepared with chocolate throughout the country. Since they are a big producer and exporter of cocoa, they should know a thing or two about chocolate. 😉

If you love Valentine’s Day, there are some countries that you would NOT enjoy on this special holiday. Some Muslim areas of Indonesia have banned the celebration, since it is not an Islamic holiday and has “Christian” origins. If you celebrate in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, or Malaysia you risk punishment.

How does your family celebrate? Do you have specific traditions? Maybe you could invite an international student in your city over to eat and talk about how they celebrate!

 

Why I Wrote a Children’s Book – Missionary Kid Stories

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(This post contains affiliate links.)

As a former Missionary Kid (MK), missions has played an important role in my life. I now live in the United States, and I want my kids to be exposed to missions, too. But this is hard to accomplish when you don’t live in another country.

I have implemented many of the things that I write about on this blog with my family, but I wanted something that would be very interesting for the kids and that would help me with other ideas of how to teach them.  Let me tell you about how Missionary Kid Stories came into existence.

My kids and I tend to read lots of books together, so I started looking for books about missions to read to the kids. I wanted one that had information on different countries and types of ministries, but from a kid’s perspective. In searching for a book like this for my children, I could not find one that talked about different ministry strategies from the missionary child’s point of view. The closest book that I found was: Around the World With Kate and Mack by Melissa Paredes (published by Wycliffe), which has a missionary child traveling around and focusing on different languages, cultures, and people groups. I also found several other books written for children about true missionaries from history, like Amy Carmichael and Hudson Taylor.

So, I set out to write a fun, educational, and informative way for children to learn two main things about missions. The result is Missionary Kid Stories . In it, kids learn:

  1. What life is like for different missionary kids in other countries (Mexico, Brazil, Zimbabwe, France, Indonesia, and the Philippines)
    • where they live
    • what languages they speak
    • where they go to school
    • their favorite foods
    • the weather
    • local arts and crafts
    • important landmarks or interesting topography
  2. Different types of ministries in which missionaries serve
    • printing Biblical literature
    • Bible translation
    • teaching in a seminary for local pastors
    • church planting
    • piloting planes to reach remote locations
    • teaching in an international school

Each chapter focuses on a different missionary kid, each in a different country, each with a different ministry focus. The characters are fictional (for security reasons in some countries), but are based, largely, on real missionary families serving around the world.

This book is intended to plant ideas into children’s minds that will hopefully grow into a desire to serve God in missions. I know that my kids have enjoyed reading this book (or having it read to them), and it has sparked many conversations about things they read about. I have been able to use this book to teach them about the countries included. For example, you can read about ideas to use when learning about Brazil here.

I the coming months, I plan to include more ideas for activities you can do with your children based on the book. I hope that families will use this to help broaden their children’s horizons. I also hope that it will be useful in homeschooling, Sunday Schools, and Vacation Bible Schools.  If you would like to purchase the paper or Ebook version of “Missionary Kid Stories”, click here!

If you have activity ideas that coordinate with the countries or ministries in the book, comment and share! I’d love to know!

Use the Olympics to Get Your Kids Interested In Missions!

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Are you having trouble getting your kids to want to learn about other countries and people groups? Do you wish they would care about others and be more generous?

Here are some inexpensive ways that you can use the recent Summer Olympics in Brazil to spark their interest:

  • Color a map of Brazil together. Label Rio de Janeiro (where the Summer Olympics were in 2016).
  • Create or color a flag of Brazil.
  • Read a book about Brazil from your local library.
  • Read a book about missionaries. Find one that includes people who have gone to Brazil, and talk about what kinds of jobs they have done. Missionary Kid Stories
  • Play soccer as a family. Look up the rules if you need to.
  • Make homemade lemonade/limeade from fresh squeezed lemons/limes.
  • Make a Brazilian dinner (include rice and beans) by looking up recipes online. You can use the recipe from MoneySavingMom Crockpot Beans for how to make crock pot beans (so simple)!
  • Put together a puzzle of the world. Find Brazil.
  • Learn some Portuguese phrases together. Bom dia!
  • Look up missions websites like JAARS http://www.jaars.org or Wycliffe (www.wycliffe.org) and search for articles about missionaries and mission work in Brazil. Pick some to read as a family. Sign up for updates from a missionary if you find one you are really interested in!

You won’t have to do all of these things to get your kids interested…just pick the ones that will work for your family! Your kids will already be excited about the Olympics, and you’ll be surprised how easy it will be to help the excitement carry over to learning about a new country and the mission work people are doing there!