First two days

We spent the first day fixing the year calendar on the computer. I made a calendar on Excel for Tammy, but I made it in Grade 1 font. I forgot that their computer does not have Grade 1 font, so Tammy had to select all and change the font to Ariel. It was good Excel practice nevertheless. I have had this calendar for a long time: every year I just retype the first 7 days of the month and Excel calculates the rest e.g. if the first Monday is 3 and in Cell A4 then the next Monday is =A4 + 7, i.e. 10. I have to change the holidays of course. It takes a little bit of time to do it, but then I get a custom made calendar. Next year I will let Tammy make all the changes.

She also completed the weather charts and register of November 08 on Excel. She fills in the weather on the calendar every day and on the first day of the next month, she enters this handwritten data onto an excel data base. Excel automatically reflects this data in visual charts. Tammy thinks it is so "cool". It helps to see that summer is hotter and has more rain than winter.

Of course our charts are not complete, because they only reflect the weather of school days, but one gets a reasonable picture anyway. This year we will add the daily rainfall - there is a rain-meter in the garden. Our charts reflected very few rainy days, as she only drew rain on the calendar when it actually. However, it seldom rains in the morning, so her charts reveal only about 1/3 of the rain!

Well last year's charts are now filed along with the printed register and the calendar with the hand written weather on it. Our register reflects all the outings we had and of course also all the sick leave or vacation leave either Tammy or I had.

We have started to read Hannah Montana: "A Nightmare on Hannah road" and it is a hit, but she does not read it as fluently as I have hoped she will. BUT she read 5 PAGES IT WITHOUT PRACTISING SIGHT WORDS BEFOREHAND! I must just be careful not to push this "test" of reading too far. It must remain easy and fun, so I will probably revert back to the match, choose, sight read method. It is a bit tedious for me, but she never seemed to mind and the important thing is, it worked. She asked for Hannah Montana work sheets where she can fill in words again. We will concentrate a little more on drilling of spelling as well - that is something the end of year tests indicated could be helpful.

For history we discussed general world news very briefly: the cholera in Zimbabwe, the trial of Jacob Zuma and the new political party COPE and more at length the fighting in Gaza. I copied news articles and rewrote them in simpler"Tammy" language for work sheets. Yet, even simplified there is a lot of new vocabulary! We have covered new concepts like infrastructure (a very topical one for anyone in Southern Africa!), the United Nations, firing of rockets, Hamas, controlling (of borders) destroy, smuggle, terrorists, import, export. The Gaza theme also compelled us to revise concepts we dealt with last year like refugees, borders, government, political parties, Egypt and Israel, elections, unemployment. Of course we used the globe to locate Israel again and maps to locate the Gaza strip and the West Bank. (While explaining I wrote on her board "people lose jobs" and she corrected me "People loose their jobs"! It was a sentence in her prize giving speech last November!)

We live in an interesting world and Tammy is part of it and should know what is happening is this world! She said she would ask at Sunday School that they pray for Gaza: "The fighting must stop." The pictures and news of Gaza fill us with such sadness! It is all so unnecessary, if only....