2010 Prize Giving

Can you believe it?  The highlight of our year has come and gone! The year has passed so quickly!  Tammy’s prize giving was on Tuesday evening.  After the superb pancake supper her mom had prepared so lovingly, all the family and friends moved into the T.V. room for Tammy’s presentations. 

She started with a Bible “speech” i.e. a power point presentation on the nature of God and why He created us, what went wrong and His salvation plan for us.  She stood still and spoke carefully and although her speech was still a bit staccato, it was much more fluent than before.  She barely glanced at the computer with the text and pictures.  She had typed out her prayer before: I helped her with sentence construction and grammar, but the ideas were her own. 

Next she talked about why one should drink water, which nutrients support digestion and which nutrients  improve or harm your brain function.  These presentations were ended with a rather lengthy question session: Tamarin asked the audience nutrition related questions, for example “Why must you eat fish?”  Practising to ask questions is very important for Tamarin, because she used to say sentences when she wanted to ask something i.e. “You can help me? “ instead of “Can you help me?”.  But besides being able to ask a question, it is equally important to listen  to the replies and to respond appropriately.   When we prepared for this section, I used to give correct, partially correct answers or wrong answers and she learned to listen more carefully: should she say, “Yes, but… “  or “Yes, and…” or “No..”.  Although asking question and responding to the replies have both improved much, we still have to work at these skills, especially at giving appropriate responses.

Sadly I have no video or picture of this part of the evening – it was in between camera swops – flat battery, would you believe!  Jan took the video clips – I said short clips, but unfortunately most were way too short to illustrate what her capability was. Won’t complain though, without him I wouldn’t have had any for the blog and the blog is the only way I can ensure the pics will endure, even if the computer crashes or is stolen, like last year! In the post below are  two pictures and two very short video clips of Tamerin doing her thing.

Then we played shop.  We handed “enquiries” re health issues (for example "What supplements should I take to maintain strong bones?”) as well as price lists to the audience.  Tammy responded to the queries with appropriate suggestions.  These we had rehearsed at length.  She astounded everyone with her ability to add up the prices mentally– up to three different amounts!   Then she subtracted the total from the “money” handed by the client and quickly picked up the correct amount of change. 

Next year, there will be less formal presentations, and more questions and responses, i.e. more interaction between Tamarin and the audience. 

Her final speech was an introduction to a slide show in Phuket. 

I gave her a certificate to mark the end of her three year Individual Education Programme.   (End?  I’ll tell you more about the new plans next time.) Her book prize was another Secret Seven book and an atlas.  (An atlas?  Also more about that next time.) It was a great year and it ended with a great evening.