More World Cup Theme News

Two days to our own World Cup celebration and three days till our end of term... and Bafana-Bafana's opening match against Mexico!
Tammy is working hard on her speech and painting (colouring in ) lots of flags. Today we cut out all 32 medium sized flags and matched them with the names of the countries. Many flags look very similar, so to help along memory, we made various associations between the flags and the countries: Here are some:

• Honduras: the stars in the middle look like an H.
• Slovenia: Venia sounds a bit like venue (one of Tammy's latest vocabulary words) and there are mountains (i.e. places/ venues) on the flag.
• Slovakia: The flag looks like Slovenia's flag except this one has crosses in the emblem. A cross in Afrikaans is a "kruis" and matches the k in Slovakia.
• Serbia: Similar flag colours as Slovenia and Slovakia, but white is at the bottom. A SERvant serves the king. There is a crown on the flag. (Servant = Serbia)
• Côte d'Ivoire: The orange elephant has white ivory and he eats green leaves.
• Ghana, Cameroon, Chile, Algeria: Ghana is in Africa and has a black star, Cameroon a yellow star and Chile a white star. Algeria has both moon and star (ALL evening lights -ALgeria)

It was great fun and in no time, Tammy was able to name all 32 flags.

Thank you God for her happy face and cheerful giggles. Please help her when she types her italics for Romans 1: 13- 15.
(For Bible homework she is going to write how she would explain Jesus and why we should believe to a non-believer. She did it verbally verby spontaneously and understandably this morning.)

Tammy's Bible Blog

I did not realize that Tammy's Bible verse blog was not on my Blog list! I have added it now, so if you click on it, you can see what we have read and discussed. The terminology might not be very correct, because of limited understanding - especially last year - but this blog reflects a very special journey Tammy and I had learning about God. I would love to hear your comments on "How to become a child of God" (Thursday, August 14, 2008). It is sometimes difficult to explain God's grace and that we are saved through grace and grace alone - but also that we have a choice: we have to choose whether we want to follow Jesus or not (Narrow and wide road), but that it is not our good deeds that gets us into heaven.

Tammy copies the verses out of her contemporary English Bible which she got as going away gift from her previous school. (I am at home at the moment and haven't got the title before me.) It has tiny print and when she received it, I never thought that she would be able to read it so soon.

Anyway, I first read a passage out of the Bible to her, with her following where I am reading. If the same passage is in the children's Bible also, I read that too, but sometimes let her read it. Then we talk about the passage and what God is telling us. Tammy then chooses a verse or verses from the passage we have read. Homework is then to copy the verse(s) in her "Bible file" in ordinary font and to "write the italics" - i.e. to type in italics the meaning or message. The italics are there to make the difference clear between the Bible verses and her (our) interpretation, but with blogging the italics disappear and she sometimes forgets to convert the sentences into intalics again. Last year I often wrote down "the italics", but this year I usually leave it to her to type the interpretation on her own and to make her own labels for the post. I still often have to help with sentence construction, but as in all things, help dimishes slowly but surely.

Last year and the first term this year, she also illustrated the verses - her file of last year is beautiful - but this year with more attention to academics and going to the gym this has fallen away. It is a pity because the art enhanced the message. However if she does the art for homework, she just rushes it and no real thought or effort goes into the illustrations, so it seemed to me a waste of time. I could not commend her "illustration" the next day and who wants to start the day with a dissatisfied teacher?

We sometimes pray together and sometimes takes turns. I try to get her to respond to the passages we have studied because if you talk to a friend, and your friend tells you something, you can't just talk about other things - you have to respond to what your friend has told you.

I am curious to know what other homeschoolers do for Bible. Please pray for us that we will do God's will in all of this.

P.S. We start every morning but checking homework and writing down the plan for the day and if I should forget to write it down, Tammy comments "And Bible..!"

Some objectives for June

I realise we have not done lapbooks yet- I have forgotten about them somehow. Its a pity. They are definitely still on the agenda.
Tammy's language is coming along. I understand her speech better, but she is still inclined to rush when she gets excited and then speech becomes clipped e.g. "He go, you turn, like this (gesture) down...at the back.." Then I have to get her to slow down: "Come again. I missed that. Where did you go?" Poor speech patterns from the past persists e.g. "You want some tea?" instead of "Do you want some tea?" Past tense is still formed through the use of "did" - a habit of many South Africans! "What did you eat?" "We did eat..." However Tamerin now says "I want to show you what my mother did bought for me..." It is going to take lots of practice still to get rid of that "did".

Language exam will include

• Spelling
• Comprehension (filling in missing words and answering questions on a passage and choosing the correct option out of given words),
• Grammar (rewrite in the past tense; say whether it is a verb or a noun).
• Speech (reciting a poem, telling what she has read and talking about any topic she chooses. I hope to record it again so as to compare her speech with evaluation done in April.)
• One minute reading - same level as November 2008 (My Secret Unicorn) as well as from new text (Disney World Website or Zac Efron Annual. She can choose.)
• Creative writing: Make sentences with..... and Blog post.

We are still revising government structure and so far it is going well. She has remembered much of earlier discussions and knows what someone who works in a government department is called, she knows what "Correctional services" "Department of Health", "National Treasury" etc. are. "Etc." is also a term that she learned this week! It is often used in the dictionary and a very necessary abbreviation! My aim with the government theme is simply to help her to understand news and to be able to read a newspaper with understanding. There is a wealth of vocabulary here: public, private, tax, income, service, official, department, office, etc. etc. (Wink!)

As far as her journeying with the Lord is concerned: She still finds it hard to express what she understands at first when we read the Bible, but after we have discussed it and I have lead her with questions, her insight is quite amazing. E.g. that if Jesus is the seed from which our new life comes, people should be able to see Jesus in us, the same way you would see a mealie after you have planted a mealie. (1Peter 1:23) (See her Bible verse blog). After choosing and copying a Bible verse from the passage we read, she has to write "The Italics" i.e. what she understands the verse / passage is saying to her. Of course I help, especially with sentence construction, but in the end it is her record of what we have discussed. We have mostly been doing Bible study out of Matthew - we have just finished Chapter 7. It is a very satisfying and enlightening study.
God has a purpose here and I continue to pray for wisdom!