Video Clips of the World Cup Speech

Here are some excerpts out of Tammy's World Cup speech - click on previous post for more pics and info on this speech.

Speaking is very difficult for Tammy, but practice makes perfect and practising speeches is a very good way to master pronunciation and sentence patterns. I am very proud of her and very thankful for the way her speech has progressed the past two and a half years that we have been homeschooling.

To understand more of what we try to achieve (and have achieved) with these speeches click on here.

Tammy sharing some background of the World Cup.

Where in the world are all the countries?

Tammy explaining the different teams in their respective groups. We cut out flags and pasted them onto different sized containers to represent the different teams's rankings.

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 and the World Cup

This past term we spent much time on long multiplication, forming of questions and reading. Two weeks ago her mom suggested we have "Football Fridays" - the whole South Africa is preparing for the FIFA World Cup. and for a long time people have been wearing Bafana-Bafana (national soccer side of South Africa) shirts on Fridays.

We are really rugby people, so I have not paid much attention to all this, but when Tammy's mom said how much fun the school children had, I warmed to the idea, and now we're very much into the World Cup!

We learned a bit about FIFA, when and where the first World Cup was held (1930, Uruguay) and about the qualification phase and of course the final phase - now I too know why this part of the tournament is called the World Cup Finals. The most interesting part, however, was of course the different countries: 13 from Europe, 6 from Africa, 3 from North and Central America, 5 from South America, 3 from Asia and lastly Australia and New Zealand. (31 out of 204 teams qualified and South Africa is the 32nd country. We did not qualify, but may participate because we are the host country. The team has improved much, and who knows? A miracle might just happen!)

Tammy remembers all the teams fairly easily and she has no trouble pinpointing them on the world map. When she names them she cites them more or less in geographical order: France, Spain, Portugal, England, Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, Serbia, Slovenia and Slovakia. She had trouble pronouncing some of the names, but we're quite adept at breaking up words and practising them syllable by syllable until she can easily say them. The word "participate" was also a hard nut to crack, but now she says it confidently. We now work on speaking phrases fluently e.g. to say participate in and not participate.... in.... Today we spent minutes practising to say "Welcome to our....." (She had said .hmmm ...Wel.....come....to)

I am a bit afraid that my hammering on fluency, will be counterproductive - make her too anxious to speak. On the other hand, this very, very slow, clipped way of speaking with lots of throat clearing, seems to me to be a habit. If people ask her a question and she takes forever before she answers, they just assume she doesn't know or doesn't want to speak and then they talk about other things. That is why I try to get her to respond immediately.

Her mother has invited friends and cousins over for a "Football day" next Thursday - a day before the actual World Cup opening game. Tomorrow Tamerin will colour with paint as many flags as she can - there are 32 flags! These we'll use as decorations.

She will also cut out printed flags to paste onto empty pill containers. These containers will represent the different teams in their respective groups and the sizes of the containers will be an indication of the team's rating. Brazil, Spain, Portugal etc. are big containers, and New Zealand and North Korea (31st and 32ne) are very small containers. She will use these containers as part of her "World Cup Speech", when she welcomes her friends and shares her knowledge of the World Cup with them. I bet most of them won't even know where the different countries are, or what their ratings are.

We have been very busy practising questions and answers about the World Cup, e.g. "Do you know which teams from Africa will participate in the World Cup?" "Which country has been the most successful so far?" "Who do you think will win the World Cup?" She can ask me these questions correctly, but she is very slow. She has to think about every word. I do not think other people - even her family - realize just how difficult it is for her to ask a question. When she asks them a practiced question during break, they try to make normal conversation and she just clams up.

Although mastering the language has, as usual, been our main focus with this theme, it has also afforded us enough math's practice: Some of the problems she had to solve were:

• If FIFA was founded in 1930, how old is FIFA now?
• If the World Cup is held every four years, when was the last world cup?
• If there are 32 teams, and there are four teams in a group, how many groups are there?
• If 2 teams out of every group move onto the next round, how many teams will be in the next round?

The last two problems were not too diffult, as she had the pill containers ("teams") to work with as well. Tammy can do basic calculations quite well, but word calculations are tough! We have been working much on "If 1.... then 3....." (You have to multiply) and If 5.... then 1....."(you have to divide), but more on this another time.

Please God, help Tammy to master her World Cup speech in time, and help her not to become too nervous. And please God, it will do South Africa the world of good, if South Africa can at least beat Mexico in the opening game... And how about South Africa moving onto the next round?... Please?

Conversations

Tammy now types out imaginary conversations instead of writing her diary. Conversations challenge her to formulate questions and to use present, future and past tenses, wherease "diary"only required "telling sentences"and the past tense.
Before she writes out her conversation, we orally practise conversations she could have - from imaginary dates with Nick Jonas till possible ones like telling her brother about antioxidants!
I am quite excited about her progress in this regard. She still struggles, but boy, has she come a long way!!
Now the biggest hurdle is to get her not to be too shy to speak to real people. On Friday I told her that the gym coach would like some feedback from us, and I suggested she tell her which exercises she likes and which ones she doesn't like so much. So we practised a possible conversation on our way to the gym:
"Gill, I really enjoy water aerobics. I like the floating exercises a lot, but I do not really like the kicking exercises. Thank you so much for helping me." (Gill is the first and only instructor to really pay individual attention to each of us, including Tammy.)
And on Friday, Gill really paid a lot of extra attention to Tammy, showing her how to improve and giving her positive feedback whenever she succeeded. At the end of the lesson she said to me that Tammy had really improved. It was the opportune moment for Tamerin's conversation with Gill, so I urged Tammy to speak to Gill and then moved away. It was to be between her and Gill.... On her way out Gill said to me that she thought she had understood Tammy....

Praise the Lord that Tamerin finally got the courage to say something more than "Hello" to a "stranger". Please pray that her tongue will be unleashed much more, so that she can be free to communicate. How frustrating to have to "practice" such simple conversations! But how thrilling for her to slowly (finally) overcome her inability to speak coherently and to "wow" herself by being able to express herself and answer questions - no matter how simple the topic.

Tammy and Spelling

A quick review on Tamerin's spelling: Yesterday she spelled "Hydrochloric Acid", "duodenum", "enzymes", "pancreas" (Guess what theme we are busy with!)

The reason why she could spell these words is because she struggled with the pronunciation of them. Every time she struggles with pronunciation (which is still very often), I break up the word and write it, syllable by syllable on her little white board and then we practise to say the word syllable for syllable e.g. "Hy...Hy...Hy (add dro) hydro, hydro, hydro..... (add chlo) hydrochlo... " etc. I find that by the time she can say the word - even long words - she can spell it too. In her theme test, she could not spell stomach, although I could see that she had tried to write it. She never struggled with the pronunciation of stomach, so we never practised the word!! (I'll make sure next time, that we practise all the words, before giving her a theme test again.)

Copying lists of words is not really effective for her: she often makes mistakes and to practise a mistake is just unforgivable! The only lists she ever has to copy are lists of new vocabulary that comes from her reader, and it works best if we practise them together - pretty much as we would do with words that she could not pronounce.

Words that sound the same, but are spelled differently (e.g. there and their), must also be learned in context and totally separately from each other, otherwise she gets very confused. In the ACE paces that we do now, she often has to underline the correct word (two, to, too). In the beginning this was terribly hard for her to do, but she is getting there. However, I still don't believe this is the best way to go about teaching these words. She has never before written to or too when she meant two! I believe these words should be learnt naturally and separately to minimize confusion.

Thank you God, for the 70% Tammy got for her test on digestion yesterday. Please help me to know how to teach her, so that she will do even better next time. Thank you that her speech has already improved soooo much! Thank you that her writing of sentences has improved. Please keep on unlocking her tongue Lord, so that she can be free to express herself.

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!

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!

Spelling that works for us

Tammy's reading is picking up - we have changed our method quite a bit from our previous sight reading method and it seems to work. We read a piece together and Tammy has to follow with her finger and read aloud too. In this way I immediately pick up if she lags behind. Sometimes I stop and let her read a word alone, especially if it is a word she has recently learned. We do not have a graded reader, but read anything that she fancies from the Bible to the newspaper to High School Musical and Zac Efron's annual and webpages. In this way, she becomes familiar with a great variety of words and expressions.

We stop our reading quite often too discuss what we have read. If I don't do this, she doesn't pick up the story line. New words or words she has forgotten are written down on a small white board. I often let her look up the word in the Oxford S.A. school dictionary. We make sentences to explain the meaning of the word e.g Tammy is a resident of M...... Minh is a resident of S..... etc. (If you are new to this blog: Tammy is mentally challenged and English is her 2nd language.)

When the board is more or less full, we go through the list again. I.e. she reads the words and words are explained again if needs be. Long words are broken up in sections to help with pronunciation. I try to use syllables that she knows well and add the prefixes and suffixes. For example today we had recently. I wrote down cent (a word she knows well!) and had her read it. Then I added re and then ly. No problem! We also had attended. I wrote down ten for her to read and then added the rest. Again no problem.

If she struggles with pronunciation, we add similar (known) words to help e.g. when she struggled with malicious, I added delicious; She struggled to remember the pronunciation of au words e.g audition and applause, so I added August with which she is very familiar. This works like a charm. She had some problems with long and short vowels, but here again, I would give her familiar examples like use and us, at and ate. We have never bothered about rules, bus she is "discovering" rules as we go along.

Then she writes the spelling as in a spelling test, but if she hesitates, I quickly show her the word again. There is absolutely no point in ever misspelling a word, merely for the sake of a test. I find that in the twenty words or so, it is very seldom necessary to show her the word again. She spells with ease words like immediately, atmosphere, dedicated etc.

Lastly she reads the piece all by herself. It is heartening to see how she "makes out" the words. Fluency and comprehension improve all the time.

Preparing for Valentine's day

This week's been short due to my swimming the Midmar Mile and taking a day's leave. We spent much time talking about the weekend and Tammy even left a comment on my other blog - she read most of it and wrote the comment all on her own.

For the rest, we practised the High School Musical Dialogue and started to make Valentines. Tamerin talked of own accord about what she wanted to write in the cards: Daddy I miss you (He's gone to Angola for business) God loves you and I love you too. You are special, Much love Tamerin. For her Mom, she wants to say Enjoy your meetings. She is still thinking about what she wants to write in her brother's card.

The Halleluja thing here is, that she is able to string a coherent sentence together. Communication is slowly, but steadily improving!

Tammy's first attempt at sewing a valentine - as you can see there was a lot of undoing!

Pinning "slippery" pieces of material together and getting the edges even! Not so easy, but Tammy has shown great improvement here, since last year. (Her very first sewing attempt was for Valentine's day last year - she was terrified of the machine!)

Taking out her valentine.

Her second attempt - the 2nd curve did not come out to neatly, but the first one's not bad he? (There was black thread in the bobbin and we did not bother to replace it with red - which turned out to be a good thing as it was easier to see the thread when she had to unpick!)

She stuffed the valentines with lavendar and attached them to her cards. She typed her own text in tables and copied and pasted some pictures we found on the web. She is sooo excited about the cards!

Dialogue practice, Speech Dividends and an imaginary trip.

This week we continued with reading my abridged version of the "High School Musical" book. Tammy enjoys it, but even with the "easier" words and expressions, she still does not read as fluently as I have hoped she would. Comprehension is a little better though. I really want to get her to just read for the story's sake and enjoy it.

I have written down the dialogue between Troy and Gabriella (main characters in the movie) where they talk to each other after they have just met, and again after they have met again at the school. In between the two dialogues there is a short linking monologue by a nervous Gabriella expressing her fears and hopes for the new school.

The idea is that Tammy and her brother will perform this on her birthday party on the 21st. Tammy loves practising this little 3 min skit and she laughs at the jokes. Memorisation has really helped to improve fluency of speech and pronunciation. (She in inclined to say sh for s and s for sh e.g sour for shower and sho for so). We break up difficult words or phrases and keep on repeating them until she pronounces them correctly and says them fairly fluently.

The speech of last year is paying dividents: because we "drilled" the contents so that she could say it, she still remembers the facts and now we can continue with the same themes e.g. she said last year "We hope the new president (Obama) will sort out their (U.S.) money problems. " This week we reviewed our own government. We talked about how we have a parliament whereas the U.S. has a congress and how our ruling party (the A.N.C.) has more than 2/3 majority allowing them to pass just about any bill they want to, whereas Obama has to get the support from the opposition as well. She said she hoped he sorted out their money problems now and I could tell her that it is just what he trying to do this week. (We just fetched her friend from school and Tammy told her that it was the opening of parliament today - her "normal" Grade 4 friend did not know what parliament was...! Tammyexplained that that was the place where "the president stood in front and talked" and in reply to my "But why do they talk so much there?", she answered "They make laws." Very satisfactory. )

Tammy's dad went to Angola this week. We talked about trips, flights etc. I then let her calculate how long the flight would be (subtraction). (She struggles a bit with subtraction, but true to form, is working hard and showing progress. ) Then we planned an imaginary trip - she would like to go to Albuquerque (where High School Musical took place). With my help, she checked rates of flights, hotels and car hire on the internet. This led to subtraction: how much more would it cost to go in July than now? and mulitplication where the rates were given in $ instead of ZAR. We calculated that it would cost about R44 000 to fly there, stay in a hotel for 2 weeks and hire a car, but we have not calculated how much feeding ourselves or seeing sights would cost! This was a fun exercise and we'll definitely do something similar at least once a week... but then next week is Valentine's day and they are going away for the weekend, so we have only 4 days to make our valentines. Adele has suggested lavendar bags... hope it's not too late to get started!

Have a great week!

High School Musical Mania or How parties can promote language.

Hannah Montana is on ice for the time being. Tammy wants a High School Musical party for her 14th birthday next month. She plans a singing competition and quizz on H.S.M. 1. She will ask the questions, but of course she must know the answers as well. I bought her the book, but plan to give it to her on her birthday. In the meantime I "rewrite" it in Tammy English i.e. in words I know, she knows or can make out. For example instead of self-assured, I write confident, instead of vacation resort, I write ski resort, instead of crisp air, I write cold air. I also leave out most of the jargon about basketball that neither she nor I really understand. (Because time is of the essence right now, I do not want to bother too much with "new" words.) After reading, we watch that part on the DVD again and discuss questions. Her vocabulary is expanding rapidly, and expression is miles better, but still a big handicap for her.

Today we watched the eclipse. We made round holes in a sheet of paper and saw the half moon sun shining through the holes. After the eclipse, the sun shining through the holes made full circles again. She wrote about the eclipse in her diary and her homework is to tell her parents what an eclipse is and what we have seen. We practised the sentences a bit in class and I hope she remembers them. She really tries hard.

We also watched cricket. South Africa thrashed Australia! Tammy seems to understand the game much better. We watched a website which gives the score the continuously for a while. We worked out how many balls were left and how many runs S.A. needed to score in order to win. (Multiplication with 6 and subtraction.) We did the last few "unknown" multiplication tables today. (Last part of 7 and 8 times tables). I am looking forward to teach her multiplication problems. Adding with ones and tens is improving steadily - she understands the concept much better now and got 46/50 for her last homework.

There are so many activities we would like to do and so little time. Please pray for us that we will get our priorities right!

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!

Some statistics for her end of year report and "The Speech" progress

When typing text out of her reader, Tammy types about 4 words per minute: She still makes many mistakes, but she corrects them herself. If only I could get her to use the delete button or select and retype method more. She spends a lot of time getting the cursor in the right place, then she backspaces and only then does she type in the correction. I have never given her a computer test before, but wanted a "statistic" for her end of the year report, so that we can gauge progress next year. She thoroughly enjoyed it, and wanted a test for homework.

For her Excel test I gave her a few number to enter and to add and to change to Rand. (Our currency.) She used the autosum button with ease and went to Format, but there she got stuck. However, when I told her to click on "Cells", she immediately went to "Currency" and clicked on R.

She reads 28.5 words per minute. (Maximum score was 35 words.)

For her math's test she scored 100% for multiplication and 57% for adding with ones and tens. She knows her bonds, but she makes many mistakes with carrying over.

In October she pedaled 1.5 km at level 1 in 10 minutes. Now she pedals more than 2.5 km at level 2 in 10 minutes.

She started to stutter again....! I felt so dejected this morning when we did the Nativity puppet show, and she stammered so. (She looked happy enough?) We prayed and then had break and then I really prayed....

After break, she did some sewing before I suggested we practise her speech again. (practise spelled with an s in S.A.) She was very slow and uncertain in the beginning, but became more cheerful and self-confident as she progressed. AND SHE DID NOT STUTTER! And what's more, she did not want me to cut anything from the speech, in fact she wants to say more! Instead of saying "I enjoyed seeing the whales at Hermanus", she wants to say "I enjoyed seeing the whales in the Indian Ocean at Hermanus". Instead of saying "the story of how Jesus was born", she wants to say "the story of how Jesus, the Saviour of the world, was born."!!

Thank you, thank you God! PLEASE help Tammy on Thursday. It will be so humiliating for her to cancel the whole speech now, and it will even be worse, if it does not go well on Thursday. Please free her tongue and her mind. You can do anything!

Speech Progress 3

Tammy is still speaking very slowly, but she is progressing well. The speech is too long, so from tomorrow, we will start to cut out sentences and probably whole sections. I have been reluctant to do it, but we have to make sure there is something well rehearsed for the big night. She likes the nativity play better. I tell most of the story with Tammy handling the puppets and the dialogue. The puppets are dressed up toilet rolls and we found a pattern for the angels at Christmas Paper Angels, but today the website did not want to open!(?)

Speech Progress 3

We have two weeks before Tammy's prize giving and still a lot of work to do before this gala event. She is now able to say most parts of her speech ( a "show and tell") correctly and without help, but she still speaks hesitantly and softly. So we have two weeks to practice to make sure she can speak confidently, fluently and clearly! Progress has been very good - for both her "speech" and the Nativity puppet show. Through practising the speech, she has internalised "pattern sentences" and new vocabulary with its sometimes tricky pronunciation (she struggles with words like ability, illustrate, rowing). The best part. however, is that her comprehension of both written and oral language has improved drastically.
She still sways a little when she practices her speech, but usually she corrects herself: she really tries to stand still and to hold her pictures still when she speaks. We still have to work on speaking with a smile and enthusiasm though.
Please pray that all will go well. So far, so very good! Thank you, thank you Jesus!

Speech Progress 2

Tammy's speech for her "Prize Giving" is coming along just fine! To make it more interesting and to make it easier for her, we have added a photo for each concept. E.g. a printout of the Excel weather chart for when she speaks about the temperatures, R5 and R2.50 coins for when she talks about fractions. There are pictures of S.A. history and old themes like Hermanus and the Southern Right whatles, but also current history ones like Obama, Mugabe, the inflation in Zimbabwe, the farms etc. To explain how unemployment spirals, she uses carton people and empty containers as businesses.

The important thing here is that her speech has improved much, but also her comprehension. Her homework comprehension this week was about her speech. All her answers showed understanding, even if the written answers were not 100%. For instance, in answer to a history question "What happened to Louis Trichard's people?" She wrote "Sickness malaria mosqito" instead of "They died of malaria". BUT SHE UNDERSTANDS! Halleluja!

Her mother says that Tammy took an old diary with a world map along when they visited a friend. There she showed them the different countries and talked about them. For someone who had not even known that she lived in South Africa at the beginning of the year, this is quite an achievement and I am so so grateful. The Lord is really helping her.

P.S. She was quite upset when Obama won the election - she even phoned me! This is the first time she has phoned me to tell me news. Her mother thinks it is because Mc Cain looks like her grandfather.

Here are some gym photos I took for her speech. We'll print them on their colour printer on Monday.

Tammy now pedals 2.5 km in 10 minutes - a big improvement over her 1.5 km in 10 minutes a month ago!

Abs exercises. She still struggles but does them without a complaint!

Speech Progress

We are practicing Tammy's speech for the end of the year function. At this stage we just read it together, but I already see signs of improved fluency in speaking and comprehension has definitely improved. When she "boasts" about her multiplication ability, I first ask her random sums (adding, division, multiplication etc.). We intend giving the audience time to ask her sums. When she talks about the weather chart, the hottest day etc., she is also to say "The temperature right now is...." This part reminds us to check the classroom thermometer every day, so as to make sure she will really be able to read it easily on the big night.
When talking about history, she has to refer to the earth globe and the map of South Africa. She does this quite well. We also talk about present history e.g. the election of the U.S. president, the problems in Zimbabwe, what causes economic problems. (Nogal!)

The second part of the programme will be a Nativity "play". I will be the narrator and Tamerin will do the speech parts of the different characters. The different characters will be portrayed by toilet roll puppets. Tammy still has to make them, but we have started with easy cut out angels.

Please pray that all will go well. I am not sure how well she will handle stress in front of an audience. I do not want to put pressure on her, but on the other hand I do want to give her a chance to show off her abilities.

Outings and New Plans

Tammy, her brother and his friend in the door of the Voortrekker Monument


Tamerin in front of the circle of wagons around the Voortrekker Monument.

Last week Tamerin's brother's school closed for 2 days (Jewish holidays), so I took them to the Voortrekker Monument. It is a huge monument erected in memory of the pioneers of Dutch and French descent who trekked northwards between 1835 and 1850. Their history is depicted in a frieze on the ground floor and in beautiful tapestries in the basement and in displays in the museum.
We discussed the history at length before the outing and Tamerin seemed to understand much of the history: their daily lives e.g. why they had to make biltong (dried salted meat) and bake bread in ant hills, but also the bigger issues: why they moved out of the Eastern Cape, why Piet Retief talked to the Zulu King Dingane, why they had to trek out of Kwazulu-Natal again... History and geography go hand in hand, so to explain the Great Trek, I often referred to the map of South Africa and in this way we revised earlier "geography" e.g. Mozambique (her father went there in the beginning of the year, and that is where the first Voortrekker leader died), the Drakensberg Mountains that the Voortrekkers crossed with great difficulty and which Tamerin got to know on their trips to Durban.
There are only a few weeks of school left. We are planning her prize giving evening. We envisage an evening with her family and possibly my family. We are working on a speech that Tamerin will make on her year's work. My idea with the speech is to get her to practice pronunciation and "pattern sentences" in a meaningful way, i.e. she practices speech on subjects which she might want to discuss anyway. Today she really struggled to say "ability", but in the end she could say: "This year I have improved my ability to read." I pray that her ability to speak will also improve drastically.

Hermanus, History and Outings

Left:

Tammy at the Union Buildings

Tammy at the Monument of the Unknown Child in Salvokop.

In preparation of the family holiday next Tuesday, I copied a website of Hermanus and edited it e.g. I changed "champagne air" to fresh air, "meandering cliff paths" to cliff paths and "historic village" to old village. There was stilll plenty of new sight words for Tammy to master in the usual match, choose and name method. This took only a few minutes and then she could read the "website". It included several words that she would not find in her reader e.g kilometres, breathtaking scenery, coastline. After reading it, I asked questions about it, e.g. "Why is Hermanuas a well loved holiday destination?" "Is it an old town or a modern town?" "What can you see if you go walking on the paths?"

My aim was to get her to read fluently, to read with understanding and most importantly to be able to converse about a topic that is very current in her family! Speech is still slow, but it is improving by leaps and bounds. Tamerin amazes me!

On Thursday, there was a power cut and we could not use the computer. So instead we discussed the history of South Africa! Starting with why Jan van Riebeeck came to South Africa, to the Great Trek and after the Great Trek: the beginnings of Pretoria and the Anglo Boer War.

I drew pictures to explain as we went along. Later we looked at History in Picture.

I had to attend the unveiling of the Monument of the Unknown Child in Salvokop the next day. I planned to take Tammy to the Voortrekker Monument afterwards, but time ran out and we'll do this outing next term.

Anyway, we still did some history: we went to the Union buildings where President Mbeki's office is. It gave us time to again talk about government and paliament: the place where they make laws. At the Union buildings we had a view of all most places we were planning to go to: the Voortrekker Monument and the City hall and even The Freedom Park in Salvokop. We drove down "Church Street" and revised the story of how Pretoria started around a church.

At the city hall, we looked at the statues of Chief Tshwane, Andries Pretorius and his son Marthinus Pretorius after whom Pretoria was name. Then we drove down "Paul Kruger Street" to go to church square - where there no longer is a church, but a statue of Paul Kruger.

(What a pity the powers that be, want to change the street names! They are really helpful in reinforcing history!)

Tamerin seemed intrigued by the history, but could not easily recall the names of the people (statues) she saw. The word "statue" made a big impression however! (What did we see at the City Hall? Statues!)

I plan to make a few worksheets on South African History in Cape Town. There will be very little time to do the base work on Monday, but hopefully we'll be able to cover enough so that she can do a history sheet on Jan van Riebeeck's castle (fort), one on the winelands and one on parliament. We have touched on these subjects, but need to revise. If she does work sheets the first week of their 2 week holiday, these days will be counted as school days. She will have to take along her weather chart and register as well!

Why history? Well history helps with a sense of identity. In Tamerin's case, the facts are not important, but understanding where the family are, what they are looking at and why they are doing that, will help her to really feel included when the family goes on outings during their stay in the Cape. If she can join in the conversations, it will enhance her self- image. I am convinced that these discussions stimulate her to think and to consentrate. We will continue with "speeches" (like the one we had on the Southern Right Whale) once they get back.

Sewing a T-shirt Sewing and Speech Progress

Tamerin is busy pinnng the sleeve to her T-sleeve. Today she has sewn so neatly, I am very happy. Yesterday, she had to unpick quite a bit. Pinning T-shirt material is not easy: she struggles to get the edges of the material to meet and yet, she succeeds surprisingly well! After the sleeves, she has to do the neck line. Please pray that this will come out neatly! It will be a big dissapointment if the shirt is an embarrasment to wear! So far it looks OK - not as neat as the skirt, but not too bad.

She is not keen on sewing, but was nonetheless very proud to show her work to her Grandmother when she visited on Tuesday. The idea is that the T-shirt will be finished in time for their holidays at the coast, so I am putting on a little pressure here. (Besides I need my sewing machine at home!) We had better choose an easier project for the last term, but the way she is working now, we might consider another "easy" garment.

Her speech on the Southern Right Whale is coming along very promisingly! She really tries hard.

What a joy to see her progress! Praise God for such an obedient, eager child.