A walk to the stables

A walk to the stables
Tamerin at the horses: we walked there on Thursday and talked rugby nearly all the way!

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Long overdue news

The 2010 school year starts tomorrow for Tamerin and me. I cannot believe the summer holidays have whizzed past so quickly and I cannot believe that I never commented on her end of the year success either! Her prize giving evening was really fantastic. My husband took some short video clips of her speech so that I could put some in the blog. I was so sad that we had not done it the first year. (We have been doing homeschool for 2 years now, so this was our second prize giving.)

And now there are not going to be any video clips either: we had a burglary and my computer - with the precious downloads of the video clips and pics of the speech - was stolen! FRUSTRATION!

Anyway, here is an account of a very successful evening. Tammy's mother had invited about 20 friends and family members for a delicious supper followed by Tammy's speeches.

Tammy was too nervous to do her introduction (welcoming her family etc.), so I told her to skip the intro and get going on the power point presentation. This went very well. She first spoke about the government and the elections.

Tammy found the "strange" mouse of her brother's laptop a bit intimidating, so she stepped up to the projected images instead and explained them by pointing with her finger. E.g. she pointed to the pictures of some cabinet ministers and told the audience of which departments they were. (Most have difficult Xhosa or Zulu names, so we did not bother with names, but she can recognize the different ministers when they appear on television.)

After each theme the audience could ask her questions they had drawn from a box full of questions. I had marked the different types of questions with matching icons e.g. government questions had the state emblem, wild life questions had a cheetah and so on.

Tammy answered the questions very well and then she asked the audience some questions e.g. "Which state department looks after the poor people?" We had practised the questions and anwers before of course. She had to be able to say whether and answer was correct or not and to give the audience the correct answer to her questions without looking at her paper! She loved this - especially when they did not know the answer!!

The next two themes, "Blood circulation" and "My favourite carnivore, the cheetah" were dealt with in the same way and were equally successful.


Then is was math's time: the audience asked her "sums" that I had typed out beforehand. Tamerin had not practised the exact same "sums" before, but lots of similar ones. Questions included "What is 1/2 of 25?" "What is 50% of 60?" What is 80% of 50?", "What is 85-14?" "How much is $4 if $1 is R7.50?" "Can you read this? 6,528,945?" She answered all these very quickly and very easily. I was so, so proud of her.


The next item was her "High School Musical" speech, where she gave the audience the outline of the story with the help of power point pictures. She also showed them where Albuquerque and Stanford were on a map of the U.S. I'm pretty sure her cousins had not known that!


It was time for her to do her musical part and she played two songs on the guitar. There is nothing like knowing that you have to perform in front of others, to get you motivated to practise!


The last speech was her The Holy Nation of Heaven speech -another power point presentation about Bible verses we have dealt with - mostly out of Matthew. She illustrated the calling of Matthew with toilet roll puppets. I had helped her to make Jesus, but she had made Matthew completely on her own.


She illustrated "First seek the Kingdom of Heaven and all these other things will be given to you too" with ping pong balls and rice: If you fill a bottle (your mind) first with worries about daily needs, there is not enough space for Jesus (the balls), but if you first concentrate on being right with God and on loving others, God will see to it that you get everything else that you need too. (If you first put the balls into the empty bottle, there is enough space for the rice also.)


After receiving her certificate and book prizes, she prayed. She had written out the prayer herself some time before and practised it, but still I knew her thanks were heartfelt.


Please pray for us for this new year, that we will make the right decisions regarding programme and content - that we both will be obedient and follow His will for us.


HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL!

7 comments:

Yvonne said...

I will be praying for you as you begin the school year. Sounds like she is doing great!

Miekie said...

Hi Yvonne
5:30 a.m: I overslept on my first day - I have to travel 50km to get to her house - so I need all the prayers - first of all that I don't speed this morning!

Adelaide Dupont said...

It was so worth the wait.

Have a GREAT 2010. During the long break, I was going to ask about office work and the training for such, as she will soon be 15 or 16.

Great to see the PowerPoint presentation with the leaders, and the toilet roll Jesus and Matthew.

"My favourite carnivore" and "High School Musical" must have provoked a great deal of interest.

And I like the way the icon was put on all the questions. Multiple icons.

(Ministry of Welfare? Do they look after the poor people in South Africa? It seems there is no such ministry; not by that name).

Probably my favourite would be the bottle of mind and worries. Stephen Covey uses a similar illustration in his Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, which I discovered through Microsoft Project in the late 1990s. The rice and the pingpong balls will make the point rather better than the coloured stones in that example. There was also grit and sand, all in pixels.

And that is a lesson to always, always keep a backup! It is good to do it on a CD/DVD-R, a memory stick or a Zip drive; depending on your needs and requirements.

There will be an interesting film called Invictus. It has already been released in the US as of December 2009, and it is about Nelson Mandela and the 1995 Rugby World Cup.

Miekie said...

Dear Adelaide
Thanks for your kind comments. The "Department of Social Development" caters for the poor - it used to be the Department of Welfare - which is what her guests answered. (The department doles out all the children's grants - supposedly only to the poor, but people keep on receiving grants, even after they got jobs... and sadly the money is often used for hairstyles and such instead of for the needs of the little ones. Teenage pregnancy also increased because of these grants... or so they say.)
I have not yet read Steven Covey, but see his books all over. Want to check it out.
I've heard about Invictus and would like to see it - will probably wait for the DVD. I never get time to go to the movies. Winning the world cup meant a lot to the nation - and just after that the soccer team, Bafana-Bafana (Our sons, our sons) won the Africa cup. They have never played well again and we pray for a miracle for the coming World Cup.
Nelson Mandela was (is) a great man - an inspiration to us all. He left a great legacy! If only all people could be as forgiving and broad minded as him.
And yes, you are absolutely right about the back-ups! We have a saying in Afrikaans: Dom mense moet swaarkry - stupid people must suffer! Two important documents on Tammy's computer got corrupted while they were saved: her weather statistics and charts and the 2009 register! Making a new register and a weather chart on Excel is first on the agenda - and this time we'll keep a back-up! We lost two years weather data - a real pity!
Keep well.

Adelaide Dupont said...

"Dom mense moet swaarkry."

What a great quote to keep in mind! Certainly next time I do something stupid, whether by my own hand or no.

Thank you for letting me know that it is the Department of Social Development, now. It seems to have been a change of policy, with a change of name.

Child endowment, perhaps? Until the child is this age? (Wonders if South Africa has a particularly natalist policy ...)

There is probably a maximum of income you are allowed to earn before you stop receiving the grants.

And who knows! A sparkly haircut could probably get you a job and brighten up your life. But, yes, the children should come first.

Yes, the World Cup must be really important. Just like the Commonwealth Games would be for India in October.

Do check out Covey, if you can. His son has written a book called The seven highly effective habits for teens, and also there is Stephen Covey's The eighth habit: from effectiveness to greatness. He has taken his ideas into the 21st century by putting them on DVD. There is one about Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan.

I seem to have come to Covey from the secular/New Age/business side of his teachings.

Hope you do get/see Invictus on DVD.

Spreadsheets, I fear, are especially corruptible, because they might have macros/programmable material in them. The same for databases.

I've been keeping backups of my Internet bookmarks, at the very least.

Jan and Miekie said...

Hi Adelaide
Thanks for the tip on Covey - I've joined the website and saw there's mail for me.

Adelaide Dupont said...

He probably would send mail frequently.

"When the student is ready, so the teacher comes!"