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.)

We're still here and doing fine!

I have been away (to Russia no less) and the modem has been giving us some problems, so I have not blogged about Tamerin for a long time.


She has been tested and is currently doing ACE English and Math. For math we are currently reviewing some Grade 2 work like place value and adding and subtracting multiples of hundred and reviewing ordinal numbers. For English we are revising punctuation: full stops (periods) and question marks and starting sentences with capital letters. Tammy has always struggled with this, and the book has helped a little, but I had to type extra work sheets in this regard. Today she seems to have really grasped it! Praise the Lord. Right now she is busy with her self test.

She also struggles with the exercises where she has to chose between "is /are" and "was/ were". Tammy has never said "She were" or "The children was", but when she has to chose she gets confused and makes mistakes. I hate these exercises: to my mind they are not helpful and only confuse children. For the same reason I never teach similar words like "there and their" or "bear and bare" at the same time! We have always dealt with them separately and there has hardly ever been a mistake. But along comes these workbooks and.....! Generally these books are helpful, but sometimes I do not agree with the method at all!


There are often little cartoons in her books and we spend a lot of time reading these and adding words to the wordless pictures e.g there was one cartoon of two little girls waking and one said "We are going on a picnic today." (The other did not say anything). In the next picture they were watching rain through the window (no words) and in the last picture the mother brought in a tray of food and the one girl said "A picnic like this is fun too."


Tammy had to say how the other girl would respond to "We are going on a picnic today" and what they would say while watching the rain. ("Oh no, it is raining!" "That's too bad, now we can't go outside.) She also put words in the mother's mouth: "Look what I've got for you! Here are your snacks."


Expanding vocabulary and speaking fluently remain our highest priority and these cartoons have been very helpful in this regard.

Other feedback:
We finished "My body" prematurely because the family planned to go to the Kruger Park, so we quickly switched to "Wild Animals" as a theme. She thoroughly enjoyed this and loved telling her family interesting bits and pieces e.g. how long a giraffe's tongue was (53cm) and why thorns do not bother them when they browse the Acasia trees.
We still practice to count money nearly every day: it is a slow, but promising process. There has been significant progress.
Tammy still keeps record of her gym progress on Excel. With the advent of the workbooks, time for life skills has dimished somewhat, however.

I've got to run. We have a short break and then it is off to swimming lesson.

Exams

Tamerin wrote two exams this week (here we write them, we don't take them). She got 63 % for literacy and 62% for math's. I am very proud of her for reading the papers herself and actually doing what was asked. Here are her results.

Literacy
7/10 for spelling:
She couldn't spell "provided" or "specifically", but she easily wrote words like "government" and "immediately".
7/ 15 for choosing and filling in the correct word.
The vocabulary came from our Disney World website work earlier this term, and our government theme. She still confuses words like "enjoyed" and "enjoyable". Some more revision needed here.
6/12 for completing sentences e.g.
"He discussed...", "I remember seeing..." "Yesterday...." Many mistakes here, but there were also gems like "I like it when... you sing the song to me." She would not have been able to do that even a couple of months ago!
13/ 15 for a monkey puzzle and questions on the "Our government".
9/10 for a monkey puzzle on general knowledge (Mostly other countries and sport.)
Questions included were "When is the shortest day of the year?" "Who is the president of Israel" "Where is the highest mountai in the world?" (She did not have to write the answer, but choose among 3 options and this in itself is a skill. I am very proud of her for reading, choosing without hesitation and marking the corresponding symbol!)

Math's
Long division: 1/3
Calculate the amount e.g. 80% of 200: 2/3
Calculate the %: 3/3
Multiplication (e.g. 59 X 7) : 1/6 (all adding mistakes!)
Adding tens and ones: 3/6 (she "carries over" when there is no ten to be carried over!)
Deduction: 5/6
Choose the highest/ lowest price, temperature etc.: 3/3 (very good progress!)
Round to the nearest Rand: 3/3
Convert $ to Rand (multiplication): 5/6
Counting of the money in my purse: 0/1 (big dissapointment here!)
Taking out R45 and R80: 1/2 (she confused R4 with R40 and gave me 2 x R2 coins and a R5 coin instead of two R20 notes and a R5 coin!)
Read the number (43,680,000 and 587,329): 2/2

Next term we will do one minute reading tests, dialogue etc. Right now she must practice guitar before her lesson! Our school breaks up tomorrow for three weeks of holiday and we'll be back on 20 July. To anyone reading this, have a wonderful holiday!

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!

Big disappointment and a new challenge

Tammy and family will no longer by going to the States this year. It is a big disappointment to the children, but there it is. Tammy and I still check the $ exhange rate each day, and she plots it on her Excel graph, but there is no longer the urgent need to learn to mentally calculate how much an item of $36.99 would be in our currency. It was fun while it lasted though, and she has learnt a lot.

So what do we do now? She is busy with Unicorn School and it starts with the unicorns preparing for exams. Seeing that her brother is busy with exams too, I decided it might be a good thing for Tamerin to also write exams. It might help her to join in conversations when she visits with her cousins.

Sooo.... what to "study" besides math and spelling? We have had several discussions on government and elections last year and earlier this year, so we will revise notes again. I hope to make the "exam" very practical e.g. to look up the telephone number of a certain government department. Just exactly what should every citizen know about government? I suppose we'll stick to the structure and functions of the different "parts" of government, the names and logos of the main political parties and taxes... and anything that is in the news this month.

Language will mostly be "fill in the missing word" based on her reader and her history notes, spelling, and finding the verb/noun/ adjective or adverb. (I find that it is important to know the difference between, for instance, a noun and a verb when using a dictionary.) I would love for her to make her own sentences with certain words as well.

Other subjects will be sport: again because it helps Tamerin to understand what is going on when family and friends watch it. (She has written on her Father's Day card: "I love watching rugby with you.) Tallying up the scores also provides good math practice. In rugby (our favourite sport) a goal counts 5 points, the conversion kick 2 points, a penalty kick 3 points and a drop kick also 3 points. In cricket you have singles, two's, fours and sixes and then there are six balls to an over and in limited cricket only 50 overs....
But why, oh why do they count 15, 30, 40 in tennis??

The math exam will include multiplication (e.g. 325 x 6), division (e.g. 325 / 6), fractions, adding with tens and hundreds, subtraction, percentages, rounding of prices and counting of money and reading of amounts involving millions and thousands.

Before finalising the study material, I better check on our goals again.

Please Lord help me to choose the right stuff and the right method to revise, and please let Tamerin enjoy it.

Last day of school of First Term 2009

We had a wonderful last day of term last week: Tammy and her family came to our farm for an outing. First we had a lovely picnic on the stoep and then we climbed up the koppie (hill) behind the house. It is not very high or far, but it is quite steep.

Tammy and her brother climbing up the rocks. Since doing water aerobics, Tammy's general muscle tone has improved much and so has her balance and stamina. She climbed up with far greater ease than December last year when they first came to visit.

Tammy's grandmother and her mom.


On top of the world. Tammy still had a fever blister: she had tonsillitis last week. The spare tyre around her waist is slowly but surely getting thinner and thinner.

Ouma Vossie posing with the horse, with brother Shaen and cousin Lee standing by. Tammy has always been fond of horses, so riding had to be included of course. Hendrik was at home, so that worked out well. I wouldn't want to saddle and handle the horses myself.

Tammy on horseback. She has several toy horses. Last year we read "My secret Unicorn". Getting onto the real thing was a little intimidating, but Tammy seemed to really enjoy it.

Big smile before the dismount!

Shaen's turn.

While waiting their turns, the cousins had fun playing with the dogs.

Mommy's turn!

This has been a great term. There has been noteworthy progress in especially the following areas:

• Spelling and ability to "make out" words. Big improvement.
• Pronunciation generally and especially of "long" words like "electricity".
  
• Ability to use multiplication purposefully e.g. every day she has to calculate how many problems or sums she had by adding the amount in a column with the number of columns. (She usually did about 60 sums per day.) After counting and deducting the mistakes, she has to work out the percentage on the calculator. She also converted Rand to Dollars. We will do much more of this as their trip draws close.
• Ability to determine "highest" or "lowest" number.
• Ability to read the thermometer.
• Knowledge of sport (cricket and rugby) and awareness of political parties in South Africa (We have an election coming up.)
• Understanding of the meaning of Easter.
• General fitness and improved muscle tone, coordination and balance

Most noticeable challenges:

• Creative language (Speech and written language).
  
• Adding - this is a bigger problem than multiplication!
  
• To improve her posture
  

Have a Happy Easter. We will be back on 20 April 2009