Reversed Comprehension and Money

Anyone, who has been following Tamerin's progress, will know that speaking and comprehension are her biggest problems. Following the success she had with formulating and verbally asking questions at her birthday picnic (see previous post) I decided to expand the method further.

When we now read anyone of her books (Jonas Brothers, a High School Musical based book, and a Secret Seven book), I get her to ask questions and I answer. In this way she

• Reads with comprehension
• Gets grammar practice
• Practises speaking

She finds formulating questions very difficult and often does not know where to start, so I still often give her clues e.g. "Jack grabbed Susie by the arm and dragged her home." "Why....?" Most of the time she is then able to complete the question, but often gets the grammar wrong e.g. "Why Jack dragged Susie home?"

She so enjoys this new way of doing comprehension, that I have expanded it to her current theme as well. The latest theme is "Money". We have been talking about employers and employees, salaries, wages, working hours (parttime, overtime etc.) business, profit, stock, cash, interest rate, credit and investments. She types a conversation she could have with her dad about these things. "Today we went to the shops and I compared the prices of products. A 1 kg packet of Viennas costs R30. A packet of 500g of Viennas costs R21. So two packets of 500g cost R42. That is R12 more." Etc. etc.

This theme has been a huge success! Besides the general knowledge and vocabulary, she gets to practice her math skills as well. We look at advertisements of shops. Some have (in very tiny print) the number of installments, the installment amounts and the interest rates below the advertised cash prices. Tammy works out the total amount payable on the calculator. To work out the difference between paying cash or buying on credit, she does the deduction on paper. She was enthralled by her discovery that sometimes you end up paying nearly double for an item. After school she immediatly took the advertisement to show her mother!

We also went to the bank to read the notices and get forms to fill in. (A part of our weekly schedule is to fill in forms - basically to practise neat lettering, but also because it is a very necessary life skill.) Tammy was intrigued with the delayed opening security doors. Afterwards we went to Pick n Pay to revise vocabulary such as "Dairy" and "Bakery" (Food theme), but also to read prices and to compare them. Measuring has also a weekly activity been a weekly activity for months and she had no trouble understanding how to compare 500g, 1 kg, 2.5kg and 5 kg.

She is beginning to remember the methods for calculations e.g. if you know the price of one and you want to know the price of more you must.... MULTIPLY and if you want to know the difference you must TAKE AWAY! We compared the prices of viennas, sugar, flour, pens and wshing powder. In the case of sugar, flour and washing powder, the medium packaging was cheaper the the bulk packaging! "Mom you have to compare prices of products!"

Thanks God for a really fun week! Thank you also that Tammy can finally count money.

Money Matters

Part of preparation to go to the U.S. is practising to convert $ to Rand. This involves checking the exchange rate every morning and while Tammy is going to do that for the next couple of weeks, I let her enter the data on Excel and insert a chart: since starting that at the beginning of the week, the Rand has steadily strengthened against the $ and it shows on her chart. This morning Tammy proudly announced today that the Rand has strengthened!

She then converts $1 - $10 dollars as well as $100 and $1000. In the beginning she has made lots of mistakes, but she has done 2 sheets without a single mistake.
Example:
R 8. 35
x 8 (How does one underline this on a blogpost?!)
66 . 80

Today she made 2 mistakes - both with adding e.g with the above calculation when she had to add 4 + 2 she wrote 7!! Tammy, Tammy....!

She loves these calculations and I love them too as they involve multiplication, adding and the use of the decimal point. She also has to estimate the answer before calculating it i.e. 8 x 8 = 64 and 8 x 9 = 72 so the answer must be between 64 and 72, but today it will be closer to 64 because 35c is closer to R8 than R9. Since estimating the answer, she has made far fewer mistakes! This is also what she will use if she has to convert $ to R without a calculator or pencil and paper.

The other money matters that we practice is rounding prices. I have started with it last year, but only now feels that she understands. So we go through newspaper ads and she reads me the real price and then what it "actually" costs. R69.99 = R70.00. Great fun.

We also count money. We have been doing it for a long time, but it is not easy and Tammy has to really focus on not confusing R and c.

This week I also let Tammy "pay" for stuff.
She first counts her money to establish how much she can pay.
Then she has to round the price e.g R35.99 = R36.
Then she gives me enough cash to cover the price, but not too much (e.g. 2 x twenty Rand notes, seeing that she has no R10 note or coins to make up R6).
Then she has to calculate how much change she would get. (R40 - R35 = R5 .... + the 1c, but seeing that we no longer use 1c coins, the shop would round it and give her 5c.)

She has also calculated discounts e.g. 50%, 25% and 10% discounts. Percentages are not new to her, seeing that she always has to calculate the percentage of her homework or test results and we used percentages a lot when we covered the elections.

She still needs lots of practice, but she understands what it is all about and is very determined to crack it. This is very practical, fun numeracy and works for us.

Fractions

This week we went to the gym every day except Friday. Although we still take it slowly, Tamerin is already showing signs of increased fitness. We just have to keep at it. I have not yet spoken to the "bio". She took the abs class on Monday and was going to show me more apparatus after our workout on the floor (cardio), but I must confess: I was just too bushed after the cycling, rowing etc. to go and look for her to do more... Next week we will let her show us around first and then we'll work out!

None of us has lost weight yet: in fact I have gained!! But it does leave us with feeling good about ourselves.

The trips to the gym are spent doing oral math's. Tammy asked to do 1/4 fractions. She gets confused at times, but understands that to get to a 1/4 you have to divide into 2 and then into 2 again. She generally gets it right and even knows that 1/4 of 10 is 2.5: with R10 one can buy four items of R2.50 at our old school's tuck shop.

Sometimes Tamerin has to buy groceries or stationery. She has an excel file marked "Daddy's Money" where she keeps record of expenses, what the balance of the cash box should be and then of course we have to count the money. She thinks it is so cool to drag formulas. Excel is real fun.