Our school computer has crashed! And with it the CASS file - i.e. the Continuous Assessment File as required by the Department of Education. I last printed it out in July 2009! My own home computer was stolen in December. It is quite frustrating to have lost so much work. Weekly backups are a must!! Anyway, I just pray the department won't come snooping around. If they do? Well, tough luck. At least there is a thorough descriptive report of her progress Aug - Nov.
Up to now we have always had a sort of a timetable - but we did not really stick to it. Very often followed our noses: did what Tamerin was interested in at that moment. We usually wrote down an "agenda" for the day and ticked off the items we had dealt with - but at the end of the day, there often were several items that we did not get to like practising posture or looking up words in the dictionary.
But now I have made a new weekly timetable!! It took me quite some time to set it up for this year. I thought we would fall behind even on day 1. But we did not! I showed it to Tammy and she seemed happy enough to follow it. Obligingly come after break which now ends 5 minutes earlier, has lunch at 12:30 and then continue with after lunch lessons until 14:00. (We start at 7:20, but leave for gym at 7:55 and are usually back by 9:30)
We will now do ACE math two days a week, and ACE English the next two days. I made sure that we leave enough time for the activities I believe in like regularly counting money, filling out forms (to improve planning of writing - if the space is small, you lettering must be small, you have to start as far left as possible ), filing papers, looking up telephone numbers, practising of conversations etc.
I found it also gave me a sense of security - when the math time was finished, I said "Time to read now", knowing that we would get round to all the other activities as well. The homework timetable is attached to the morning schedule: E.g. on Mondays she has to write her diary, do reading comprehension, ACE math and do some theme work (Social studies).
When I checked at the end of the day - that is exactly the homework I wrote in her homework diary as we worked through the timetable.
Long live timetables!
A walk to the stables
Tamerin at the horses: we walked there on Thursday and talked rugby nearly all the way!
Monday, January 25, 2010
Sunday, January 17, 2010
First week of 2010
The first week went very smoothly indeed. Tammy works hard in her Ace books - math and English. She will finish the last of Grade 3 work in math soon and then start with Grade 4! This week she had to count money again and that was fine, but when I scored her measuring of pictures and drawn lines, the answers did not match those in the score book - only to find that the drawn lines in the book were not accurate at all! A line of 12.3 mm is given as 12 1/2 cm. I find this pretty shocking - should write to ACE. The lines they draw in the book, should be very accurate don't you think?
English is still Grade 2 level, but we are getting there. She is much more keen to do creative writing e.g. to write sentences with given words. On Thursday I stayed the afternoon while she did her homework and she really battled with making sentences with "isn't", "wasn't" etc. It is not that she doesn't know what the words mean, but to have to think up sentences is still hard for her.
On the grammar side, I find that the ACE books do not give enough drill work - she needs much, much more before she really grasps a concept. When she has to chose between three words e.g. to / too/ two and underline the correct one, she is usually able to do it, but when it comes to chosing the correct form of a verb, e.g the children is / are at school the alternatives seem to confuse her. I now try to get her to give the correct form of the verb, by simply writing the verb e.g "eat, ate, eaten" at the top of a couple of sentences with blanks where she has to write in the appropriate form of "eat". I also underline the timewords or auxiliary verbs to help her choose the correct form. So far it seems to work.
For reading we are busy with two books. I want her to read a Secret Seven book by Enid Blyton all by herself - I just give her monkey puzzle type questions on the story, which she has to score herself. The idea of the questions is just to make sure that she understands the story. I wrote meanings of new words in pencil above the few words that I thought she might struggle with, but they are few and far between. So far she seems thrilled with the book and that is my aim: to let her experience that reading by yourself can be great fun! For speech we practise asking and answering these questions orally.
The other book is another "High School Musical" story: this one is about school elections - a fun way to revise the whole voting process and the vocabulary that goes with it. (If we hadn't done Elections as a theme last year, I doubt whether she would understand anything of the story.) We read this book together: We read aloud together and she follows with her finger and we discuss the story as we go along. My aim is to keep on improving fluency of reading (eyemovements) as well as her vocabulary.
May the rest of the year be as much fun as the first week!
English is still Grade 2 level, but we are getting there. She is much more keen to do creative writing e.g. to write sentences with given words. On Thursday I stayed the afternoon while she did her homework and she really battled with making sentences with "isn't", "wasn't" etc. It is not that she doesn't know what the words mean, but to have to think up sentences is still hard for her.
On the grammar side, I find that the ACE books do not give enough drill work - she needs much, much more before she really grasps a concept. When she has to chose between three words e.g. to / too/ two and underline the correct one, she is usually able to do it, but when it comes to chosing the correct form of a verb, e.g the children is / are at school the alternatives seem to confuse her. I now try to get her to give the correct form of the verb, by simply writing the verb e.g "eat, ate, eaten" at the top of a couple of sentences with blanks where she has to write in the appropriate form of "eat". I also underline the timewords or auxiliary verbs to help her choose the correct form. So far it seems to work.
For reading we are busy with two books. I want her to read a Secret Seven book by Enid Blyton all by herself - I just give her monkey puzzle type questions on the story, which she has to score herself. The idea of the questions is just to make sure that she understands the story. I wrote meanings of new words in pencil above the few words that I thought she might struggle with, but they are few and far between. So far she seems thrilled with the book and that is my aim: to let her experience that reading by yourself can be great fun! For speech we practise asking and answering these questions orally.
The other book is another "High School Musical" story: this one is about school elections - a fun way to revise the whole voting process and the vocabulary that goes with it. (If we hadn't done Elections as a theme last year, I doubt whether she would understand anything of the story.) We read this book together: We read aloud together and she follows with her finger and we discuss the story as we go along. My aim is to keep on improving fluency of reading (eyemovements) as well as her vocabulary.
May the rest of the year be as much fun as the first week!
Sunday, January 10, 2010
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!
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!
Saturday, October 17, 2009
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!
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!
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Progress - slowly but surely
Tammy is doing O.K. with her PACEs (workbooks), but I find some of the exercises no good. In an exercise when she had to choose between "a" and "an", she had to fill it A or An at the beginning of each sentence. When I gave her a selfmade additional worksheet, she wrote A / An with capital letters in the middle of sentences too. She has never done that! Frustration.
She does well her tests, but comprehension is still a problem.
I think "High School Musical 3" is a bit difficult for her, but she always thanks me so profusely for helping her to read it, after a reading session, that we keep going. I often give her multiple choice questions and then we practice asking and answering these questions verbally.
It is nearly the end of our school year, so we have to start thinking about her end of the year speech, what she is going to do for Christmas and so on. Last year, she made puppets and we had a puppet nativity show at her prize giving evening. Not sure what to do this year, Bible wise. Perhaps memorize and dramatize Bible verses?
She wants to play a song or two on her guitar and I also want her to do some water aerobics on prize giving evening. All this on top of her workbooks and other work.
Please pray for us for discernment regarding choices for her special evening!
She does well her tests, but comprehension is still a problem.
I think "High School Musical 3" is a bit difficult for her, but she always thanks me so profusely for helping her to read it, after a reading session, that we keep going. I often give her multiple choice questions and then we practice asking and answering these questions verbally.
It is nearly the end of our school year, so we have to start thinking about her end of the year speech, what she is going to do for Christmas and so on. Last year, she made puppets and we had a puppet nativity show at her prize giving evening. Not sure what to do this year, Bible wise. Perhaps memorize and dramatize Bible verses?
She wants to play a song or two on her guitar and I also want her to do some water aerobics on prize giving evening. All this on top of her workbooks and other work.
Please pray for us for discernment regarding choices for her special evening!
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
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.
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.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
3rd Term 2009
I wrote Tamerin's report last week. I am very grateful that she is still progressing so well and so fast. Her development is amazing and its exiciting to be part it!
This term we started with My Body and How it works as a theme. So far we have covered the heart and blood circulation, the skeleton and the brain. Tammy is quite interested and remembers a lot of detail - she has even told her family what she has learned. The challenge with this theme is how to keep it practical and in line with the vision to be as independent and self-sufficient possible one day, whilst also realising that she will probably not write matric or do tertiary studies. What do you really need to know about your body? To my mind, you need to be able:
This term we started with My Body and How it works as a theme. So far we have covered the heart and blood circulation, the skeleton and the brain. Tammy is quite interested and remembers a lot of detail - she has even told her family what she has learned. The challenge with this theme is how to keep it practical and in line with the vision to be as independent and self-sufficient possible one day, whilst also realising that she will probably not write matric or do tertiary studies. What do you really need to know about your body? To my mind, you need to be able:
- To know how to keep your body in tip top condition
- To know how to best utilise your resources (your brain, your muscles etc.)
- To understand what a doctor might tell you about your body
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