Rugby, the National Anthem and the Olympics!

Tamerin's adding ability has slumped a little - when she works on paper, she usually does fine, but she is not really able to transfer her adding skills to every day life. She told me that she and her father were going to see the rugby test between S.A. and Argentina. I explained the game to her in very simple terms: How many members in a team, how they score a try (goal), what a conversion kick is, the basic rules and what happens if you break a rule (scrum / penalty kick). We then pretended on paper that there were two teams playing and added up the scores: The Springbucks scored a try and succeeded with the conversion kick: i.e. they got 5+ 2 = 7. points. They made a mistake and the Pumas (Argentina) succeeded with a penalty kick between the poles= 3 points. Which team was ahead? Then the Pumas scored a try and the Sprinbucks another try and so on and so on.

A lot of adding, but more importantly practice in the concept of more / less. Which team is ahead? How many points did the other team need to score to win? Tamerin has always been struggling with more, less, higher, lower (temperature/ price), etc. and subtracting is not her strong point. The rugby exercise gave us the opportunity to revise these basic calculations. I hope it helped her also to understand and enjoy the game more. Will talk some more about the rugby on Monday.

We also practised the National Anthem a little bit, but we did not have enough time to really learn it well enough to be able to sing along freely. We will continue with this: hopefully South Africa will get a gold medal in the Olympics, and hopefully we get to see the prize giving. Our anthem has four verses: one is Zulu, one is Sotho, one in Afrikaans and only the last one in English!)

This week we also talked a lot about the Olympics. Tamerin knows the alphabet and with a little help succeeds to find a word in the dictionary. However, she struggles to put words into alphabetical order. Last week I gave her six words (names of countries) each starting with one of the first six letters. (Angola, Brazil, Canada etc.)She easily ordered these alphabetically. This week we continued with the alphabet, but now I gave her two counties starting with the same letter, so that she had to look at the 2nd letter too e.g. Mozambique and Madagascar. She struggled a little more with these, but showed interest. She then looked if she could find the countries on the globe. Usually she found them quickly. I had thought that she would enjoy the Olypic parade when the countries come in in alphabetical order... only to find the came in in Mandarin alphabetical order! Oh well, I took her to play with a cousin on Friday, so I doubt that she even watched it. But at least, she had interesting practice in the alphabet and she knows about the Olympics.

I think it will be fun to watch some swimming or gymanstics with her next week (one of the perks of homeschooling), as long as we can combine it with numeracy (Who scored most points? Whose time was the fastest?)

We are also revising her Bible verses - a time of great blessing for both of us.