Mi Piace Il Verbo Sentire Posted by Serena on Apr 4, 2019
Today, I’m dedicating a poem by Alda Merini (1931-2009) to my dear husband Geoff, who sometimes complains that the verb sentire (to feel) is used for too many different actions: to hear, to smell, to taste, and to feel. In reality, we do actually have specific nouns and verbs to describe i cinque sensi (the…
A Bucket Of Paint – Analysis Posted by Geoff on Mar 29, 2019
Let’s take a closer look at some of the grammar from our previous post, A Bucket Of Paint La mamma ed io stiamo guardando delle vecchie foto che ci riportano indietro a dei bei ricordi. Mum and I are looking at some old photos that bring back some nice memories. ci riportano indietro a dei…
A Bucket Of Paint! Posted by Serena on Mar 26, 2019
La mamma ed io stiamo guardando delle vecchie foto che ci riportano indietro a dei bei ricordi. Mum and I are looking at some old photos that bring back some nice memories. Fra le tante, ci sono un paio di foto di papà nel suo negozio di macchine da scrivere Olivetti a Bengasi. Amongst the…
In Their Own Words Posted by Serena on Mar 21, 2019
As the title suggests, today’s post is not ‘ours’ as such, but has been written by a small selection of the 9 and 10 year old children who worked alongside us in our printing workshop at a local scuola elementare. N.B. Only two of the thirteen children in this class were boys, hence the male…
Back To School – Part 3 Posted by Geoff on Mar 15, 2019
By popular request … we’re back at school again! In my previous post I wrote about the creative workshops that I’ve been doing with la prima e la seconda elementare (elementary classes 1 and 2) in a local scuola elementare (elementary/primary school). Following the theme of il ciclo dell’acqua (the water cycle), we used la…
Back To School – Part 2 Posted by Geoff on Mar 7, 2019
What better place to witness the veracity of the Italian saying ‘tutto il mondo è paese‘ than in a primary school? Tutto il mondo è paese (literally ‘the whole world is a village’) means: wherever you go people are fundamentally the same. The children that I have the privilege of working with in una scuola…
Back To School – Part 1 Posted by Geoff on Mar 5, 2019
If someone had told me, as I joyfully walked out of the school gates for the last time way back in 1974, that I’d one day be teaching creative workshops in a village school in Italy, well I’d probably have thought them crazy! But life, as we all know, is full of many strange twists…