15th Birthday!

Tamerin turned 15 last week. She has grown so tall and is slimming down very nicely. She has lost about 5 kg since last year. Water aerobics seem to be paying dividents - even though she still has bit of a spare tyre around the waist, it is so much better and I am really proud of her. A major goal is now to improve posture: she and I are inclined to slouch. I let her stand with eyes closed in front of the mirror. When she opens her eyes, I let her focus on a pelvic tilt to see what wonders that does to her posture and how much better her clothes look. (She is to remind me to stand up straight, but she has never done it. None of us wants to look like an old woman!)

I could not attend her birthday party on the Saturday, so I packed a picnic on her actual birthday and her mother, her grandmother, Tammy and I had a lunch in a park.

One of the gifts I gave Tammy was a book by the Jonas Brothers. In it there are interview type questions to each brother e.g. "What type of ice-cream do you like best?" "What is the best movie you have ever seen?" Before we went on the picnic Tammy practised some of these questions. Asking questions is just as difficult as formulating answers! She asked us these questions at the picnic. At first she was hesitant, but soon warmed to the idea. This could become an annual event!

You might have noticed that she no longer blogs. That is because, all of a sudden, she can no longer copy and paste her diary onto her blogs. It is quite a shame - she has kept a journal (with my help of course) for two years and her sentence construction, spelling, typing etc. have improved much. However, the diary thing has become a bit boring: its always more or less about where they went and what they ate, and perhaps about what school work we did. She never writes of own accord about how she felt.

I now want her to write dialogues. She is still inclined to have conversations with imaginary people. I do not want her to "speak to herself" because she does this in front of other people and other children, especially, just think she is "mad". I do recognize her need to express herself in conversation though, and therefore creative writing will now be "conversations".

By the way, the PACE she has to do this week is just about homonyms: underline the correct word: e.g. flew/ flue. (Who needs to know what a flue is? Certainly not Tamerin.) This goes against all I have tried to teach. I believe these exercises will just confuse her in the long run. She did a few of these underline exercises and did them quite well, but I think that is because she has known these words in context for a long time. She has never confused "eight" and "ate". Generally she even gets her "their"and "there" right.

Anyway, I have made a list of the new vocabulary in the book and will teach these words to her separately - I am convinced if she learns earn and urn at the same time, she is bound to use the wrong word! Who needs to know about homonyms anyway? As long as you know the words and can spell them and use them correctly in context.

God, please help me to make the right teaching decisions for Tamerin!

Tamerin's own blogs

We are back after the holidays. Most of last week was spent in Tamerin creating her own blogs. She enjoyed writing her profile, choosing her favourite books, music etc. I sometimes had to give hints e.g "What C.D do you always play in my car?"
Making the Diary Blog was easy - she just had to copy her diary she had typed so far. The Bible verse blog was a different matter, as she has been copying her daily verse by hand, which meant she has had to retype them all. She types slowly, but with less and less help. She types her written work, without me having to dictate. When she has finished, I get her then to read what she has typed and she is usually able to see where she has left out a word or a letter. This is a major step forward! She has retyped the verses we did in January and February, so there is still a long way to go before we get to just our daily verse again. Usually these verses were taken out of the Bible story we read that day, but sometimes they were verses that just the Lord just gave us. It has been benficial to revise our Bible "work" of the year again.

The past week we have spent more and more time in praying together. We have a schedule based on the Lord's prayer that we use. Praying does not only help her in her relation with the Lord (of course) but also with her speech. (Generally her speech is still indistinct, but there has been a slow by sure improvement).

Tamerin now writes her diary for homework on her "Diary originals" file. The next morning she copies it onto her "Diary" file and I help her with corrections (i.e. from present tense to past tense) and to expand it (i.e. to write about important happenings she has left out). I can really recommend keeping a diary. She enjoys it, although it is still tiring. In the beginning of the year, she wrote very short sentences and these were more or less dictated letter by letter. Now she can write simple sentences independently and is usually able to correct her own mistakes. She is so proud of herself when she remembers how to spell a word or "worked out" how to spell a word e.g. "pram".

I hope that later in life she will read her diary again and enjoy remembering this time. My vision is that her diary will become more and more a mirror of what she has done. I also hope that the practice in typing written script and generally working on the computer will lead to a job one day.