Speech news

Tamerin and I have started working on her end of the year speech. Speaking is Tammy's biggest handicap, so learning a speech is a BIG challenge. Last year Tamerin learned this looong speech about everything she had learned. It was a big success. The speech has helped her much with speaking patterns and general fluency and pronunciation.

My aim was to practise such speeches throughout the year this year. We did it in a small way, but never really got stuck into it. However, now with the end of the year only weeks away, we are more focused on getting it right. I have written a "High School Musical" speech and one on government - our first term theme. We have gone through them a few times this week and Tamerin seems so happy and determined to master these speeches. Yesterday, she started with memorisation, i.e. to speak and not to read the speech. She has pictures and key words to help her along.

She had to practise how to say "probably", but otherwise was able to pronounce all the words and her tongue did not get all tied up. Afterwards, she gave me a big hug with shiny eyes and then went proudly off to say her new word to her mom. If I think how much she had to practise a sentence like "This year I have improved my ability to read...." last year. BIG IMPROVEMENT!

Praise the Lord!

Tamerin's Prize Giving: Her End of Year Function

The prize giving evening was a huge success!

Tamerin's biggest challenge is to communicate properly. Her comprehension has been improving steadily, but her spoken language has been a handicap all along: from pronunciation till sentence construction. To stimulate spoken language we prepared a speech which she practised for her prize giving. This was held on the eve of the last day of school. (The school year in South Africa runs from January till beginning of December.) So instead of an end of the year concert, she had an end of the year speech on her year's work. I believed that as a ballet or music exam or an Eisteddfod or an gymnastics competiton motivates children to polish their year's practice, this speech would motivate Tammy to give her all. And boy, has it ever!

Her parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins attended and all were most impressed. Best of all was that Tammy really enjoyed it. No-one, except me and the Lord and in a way her mother, knew just how much her speech has improved through this effort. If you have been following our blog, you would know that this speech preparation has gone on for a long time, but it has paid dividends: her pronunciation has improved and pattern sentences has been drilled in a meaningful way and skills such as reading the thermometer were also fine tuned.

The speech was presented as a show and tell and covered most aspects of her school work such as her reader, numerical skills, geography, history and life skills.
Tammy ready to start - the stack on the left table were mostly pictures which she lifted and discussed one by one and then put them on the table on the right. The stack also included her reader and her dictionary!

It took a lot of guts to stand in front of an audience and speak, but she did it well. She stood reasonably still and did not fiddle too much with clothes etc. (We practised this a lot too!)

"I understand prices. The price of this milk is R13.99, but it actually costs R14."

The temperature right now is 24 degrees (Celcius)

"I also know the map of South Africa, especially the road to Durban..."

"The Voortrekkers were farmers from the Eastern Cape, who trekked north..."
"
The Southern Right whales come all the way from Antartica to our coasts every spring..." It is the first time she was able to pronounce "Antartica" correctly! (The Southern Right whale was part of our curriculum because the family went to the whale festival in September.)

Between her speech and her Nativity puppet show, she passed round a box with sums and problems - the audience asked her tables, division etc. and she answered without hesitation .She loved this. In the meantime I set up her puppet show. I was the narrator and Tammy did the dialogue. We ended with a discussion as to where Jesus is now, what He is doing in heaven, how you become His child and what will happen when He comes back. I asked her the questions and she answered them.

"Don't be afraid Mary. God thinks you are special. You are going to have a baby boy and you must call Him Jesus."

The setup.

Tammy's puppets: crib and all were made out of toilet roll tubes - got the idea on the internet. (I cannot edit my posts once I leave this page, so I can't add the link now. Does anyone else have this problem?)


The angels were another internet idea.

"Thank you for my book prize Teacher!" (She also got an Excellence Award with a gold sticker on which I first embossed an A+ with a ball point at the back. She was most thrilled with the A+)

I am just sad, that due to a misunderstanding, we only have photos and no video clips to share. Fortunately her Oupa made a full scale video for the Durban Ouma to enjoy when she comes to visit in December. The enthralled audience had tears in their eyes and were full of compliments and praise. However, all this is God's work: He brought us together and made all this possible. All praise to Him!

Thank you, thank you God for a wonderful year.

As we now have our summer vacation, this blog will sleep for a few weeks. We'll be back early in the new year. Tammy might come to the farm for a visit, so you might hear from me next week, but in case I have no homeschool news before Christmas:

MAY YOU ALL HAVE AN ESPECIALLY BLESSED CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Gratitude tag.

So I have been tagged by Nicole to name 10 things that I am grateful for. As this is our last week of school, it is an excellent time to think of all the things that I am truly grateful for. Since this is a homeschool blog, I'll concentrate on the blessings of my homeschooling year.

1. I am grateful to God for providing this job for me - I am homeschooling a very special child - not my own. Two years ago, I was principal of a very busy pre-school and on the brink of collapse, last year I was teacher of the Special Needs class in a private school and exhausted and frustrated. This year I am teacher of only one and loving every bit of it. Thank you, thank you!

2. I am grateful that my husband supports me in this. I live 50 km from my job, so it costs a lot to go to work. But Jan never complains.... he has ALWAYS supported me in whatever I did. After 33 years I am still very grateful for the coffee in bed and the breakfasts he makes every morning and for the coffee for the road... Jan I'll keep you! (The coffee for the road is actually only hot water, but it does make the road shorter!)


And I'll keep my son Hendrik too! (And the rest of my family: Frans, Thelwyn and Martelize and Gert, Dorette and Franco. Read more about them here.)
3. I am grateful for Tamerin's parents for believing in me.... I was her teacher last year, so it was quite a compliment for me, when they asked me to homeschool her.
4. For Tamerin of course: She tries so hard and she has shown such wondeful progress! She is a sweet loving girl who is keen to learn. And she is a GOOD girl - it is not difficult to be patient with her!
5. For her aptitute for computers -she took to it like a duck to water! Much better than many adults.
6. For her improved academic ability: language, mathematics and history and geography (Well...the last two sounds a bit grand but we did do some, with good results! At least she now knows what an election, a goverment, a law, a court, a president etc. are!)
7. For her improved muscles: I don't see it, but many other people have remarked how well she looks. And the express abs classes do me the world of good as well!
8. And her abililty to sew with a sewing machine: she is able to really control the pressure of her foot on the pedal. The beginning of the year, she could hardly pick up a pin, let alone stick it through material and now she has made a skirt and a T-shirt, albeit with a lot of help. She really did stitch it on her own, even though I stood behind her shoulder like a policeman watching her with a hawkeye.
9. The lovely view from the classroom. It is magnificent! However, it also gets very hot in there as the windows can't open.... but (big gratitude here), my hot flushes are now nearly non-existent. I am back on hormones and I can live again and the heat does not really bother me!
10. Hackneyed expression or not: last but not least - definitely not least - Tammy now knows Jesus so much better: she knows about salvation and grace and forgiveness and..... and..... And she can read the Bible!

God I bring to you Tammy: you have used me to plant seeds. Please God, let them grow in abundance! Please bless Tammy greatly! Please loosen up her tongue so that she can speak freely - especially tomorrow night!

11. I have to add another gratitude: my blog friends! Thank you for friends who encourage and support and for their great ideas. Thank you for the internet, for bringing me in contact with wonderful people all over the world!

Thank you God for a GREAT, GREAT year!

I'll tag others in a separate post - for some reason I cannot edit my posts, so I cannot go out of this one to copy the "rules". Does anyone else also have this problem? I can click on edit, but can't change a thing... (Sorry! I should not moan in a gratitude post!)