Amy's family are going to the coast next week. Besides counting the "sleepies" on the calendar each morning, she also worked out how many weeks there were i.e. she had to divide the days into 7. Besides the 2 times table, Amy does not know any tables yet, but with the abacus she was able to work out how many 7's there were in 18 etc. The 2nd 7 on the abacus (i.e. 8 - 14) is of course divided, so she had to remember that the group of 3 + the group of 4 make up one 7. She understood this quite well. We looked on the map where they are going and she looked up on the distance chart, how far that is (638 km). Then we worked out how long it would take to get there if one drove at 80 km/h, 90 km/h, 100 km/ h.
The next day we looked up the road on the road atlas: she had to look up to which page to go, find the route, follow it, and then see to which page she had to go next. Amy typed the different towns on excel and the distances between the towns as indicated on the atlas. We also worked out how long it would take for each distance more or less. Afterwards she added up all the distances and times with excel - the minutes had to be divided into 60, to work out how many hours the minutes made. Because we worked with estimations, the minutes came to an exact 180, so it was not difficult to work out the hours! Of course she also had to work out what time they would arrive: if they left at 6:00 it is 6+ 7= 13 , if they left at 12 it would be 12 + 7 = 19. Then of course she had to work out again what time 13:00 is on her watch. She looked thrilled when she started to remember without calculating that 17:00 is 5 o'clock etc.
Amy also typed in all the different toll gates (5 between Johannesburg and Durban would you believe!). If we can find out how much each one charges, she can work out how much cash her Dad should have ready. It would be good for her to count out the money - she loves doing this.
Amy also used a search engin to search for things she hope to see (dolphins and whales), as well as the place they are going to stay. I am amazed at how well she can read words like "search", "print" "back" etc. on the internet, yet takes her time to read the same words in her story book. I have tried since the beginning of the year to make Amy aware of road signs. She took note, but not as much as I have hoped. Yet when she saw lists of road signs in the atlas, she was clearly more intrigued. Today we drove a short distance on the highway and noted many different road signs - also that the routes have numbers - then we checked on the atlas again, and so on and so on.
These holidays have given us much opportunity to learn. How wonderful not to be bound by a curriculum, but to use life itself as it happens, as the curriculum.
A walk to the stables
Tamerin at the horses: we walked there on Thursday and talked rugby nearly all the way!
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
The 3 R's: progress this week
Yesterday Amy suddenly grasped that 8+2 = 10, 2+8=10, 10 -2=8, 10-8=2 is the same combination, just in different forms. I let her write out all the bonds of 10 (i.e. 5 bonds) in this way and since doing that she's been her old self again. She loves it if I ask her sums. We walked to the shops and back (more than 5km all in all) and she never complained. We discussed many things we saw along the way, but also spent much time asking and answering sums. The "new" sums of the day were 8 + 3 and 9+3. She still remembered them today, and answered without hesitation. She has known all her doubles e.g. 8+8 and the uneven bonds between the doubles: 3+2, 4+3, 5+4 etc. for some time, and she knows how to work out 9+ (work out what is 10 +...and then go one less.) For a child who could not grasp how to add +1 without counting blocks last year, this has been a major achievement. I am so, so encouraged by her.
This morning I could see that she was not in bright spirits and when we started. It turned out she was angry with her Mom... Why? Because she did not like school! I was rather taken aback, but I realised, it is not that she does not like school, it is just that she likes watching T.V. more! We talked about have idols again and what God wanted of us. We read 1John1: 8-9. If we tell God about our sins, He forgives us. What a relief to be able to confess these things. After Bible and prayer, she was much happier and we had a very good day of hard work.
Amy's reading and writing ability is progressing well. I do not bother any more with phonics and spelling - we just do our sight reading routine and comprehension routines, but I am amazed at how much she remembers - also when she writes or types. She types her diary a few times a week. In the beginning I had to spell out letter for letter for her to type. Now she types many words without me having to spell them for her. I just have to remind her not to leave out the little words e.g when she wants to write "I like computer", she is inclined to want to simply write "computer" without the "I like".
She enjoys typing her diary and e-mails her updates to her Mom. It still takes a very long time to complete her diary or a short e-mail, but I have seen tremendous progress here. (I still dictate most, but her own input in what to write is increasing steadily.) I think it is because the diary and e-mails are about what she does every day. The words used, are the important ones in her life. The copying of Bible verses have had the same effect - she can now write a word like "forgive" without my help.
Tomorrow we are going to cook and hopefully read the road map to the coast, where her family is going the end of the month. I hope there will also be time to surf the web. I hope we can make a blog of her diary.
This morning I could see that she was not in bright spirits and when we started. It turned out she was angry with her Mom... Why? Because she did not like school! I was rather taken aback, but I realised, it is not that she does not like school, it is just that she likes watching T.V. more! We talked about have idols again and what God wanted of us. We read 1John1: 8-9. If we tell God about our sins, He forgives us. What a relief to be able to confess these things. After Bible and prayer, she was much happier and we had a very good day of hard work.
Amy's reading and writing ability is progressing well. I do not bother any more with phonics and spelling - we just do our sight reading routine and comprehension routines, but I am amazed at how much she remembers - also when she writes or types. She types her diary a few times a week. In the beginning I had to spell out letter for letter for her to type. Now she types many words without me having to spell them for her. I just have to remind her not to leave out the little words e.g when she wants to write "I like computer", she is inclined to want to simply write "computer" without the "I like".
She enjoys typing her diary and e-mails her updates to her Mom. It still takes a very long time to complete her diary or a short e-mail, but I have seen tremendous progress here. (I still dictate most, but her own input in what to write is increasing steadily.) I think it is because the diary and e-mails are about what she does every day. The words used, are the important ones in her life. The copying of Bible verses have had the same effect - she can now write a word like "forgive" without my help.
Tomorrow we are going to cook and hopefully read the road map to the coast, where her family is going the end of the month. I hope there will also be time to surf the web. I hope we can make a blog of her diary.
Monday, April 7, 2008
Language comprehension
We are back in full swing after the school holidays and my mother's funeral. Amy did not seem keen to start school work again, but once we got going, she was fine. Her sums were disappointing. I had planned on doing adding with ones and tens, but she was not too sure of her bonds , so new work had to be put on ice for a while. She made many mistakes with last week's homework. (I think she did it in front of the television!) We have to do a lot of revision again, but I am confident that she will quickly pick it up again and then we can go on. I believe math's should always be easy and fun.
Reading was good, but what especially made my day, was the way she responded to verbal questions - both when we discussed what she did this weekend and also when I asked her questions about the story we read. She definitely listens better to what is asked and seems to understand when and why better. She also attempted to ask me questions and I helped her to formulate them properly. She loved "catching me out." We still have a long way to go as far as comprehension is concerned, but there has been promising progress! We do a lot of comprehension homework i.e. the filling in of missing words from the text and answering simple questions.
Both Amy and I were rather disappointed that she gained nearly 4 kg during the school holiday. However today she had lost 1 kg again and 1 cm around her waist. Tomorrow we plan to go for a long walk again. She needs the exercise and it is a good time to talk. We need to talk and talk and talk - at this stage it seems the most pressing need.
For fun, and improved understanding, we searched for horse farms in the Blue Ridge mountains on the internet. Amy's book, My Secret Unicorn is about a family on a farm near the Blue Ridge mountains. She loved finding the pictures on the internet. We still have to find Carolina etc. on Google Earth.
Teaching one special child is great! What a priviledged teacher I am.
Reading was good, but what especially made my day, was the way she responded to verbal questions - both when we discussed what she did this weekend and also when I asked her questions about the story we read. She definitely listens better to what is asked and seems to understand when and why better. She also attempted to ask me questions and I helped her to formulate them properly. She loved "catching me out." We still have a long way to go as far as comprehension is concerned, but there has been promising progress! We do a lot of comprehension homework i.e. the filling in of missing words from the text and answering simple questions.
Both Amy and I were rather disappointed that she gained nearly 4 kg during the school holiday. However today she had lost 1 kg again and 1 cm around her waist. Tomorrow we plan to go for a long walk again. She needs the exercise and it is a good time to talk. We need to talk and talk and talk - at this stage it seems the most pressing need.
For fun, and improved understanding, we searched for horse farms in the Blue Ridge mountains on the internet. Amy's book, My Secret Unicorn is about a family on a farm near the Blue Ridge mountains. She loved finding the pictures on the internet. We still have to find Carolina etc. on Google Earth.
Teaching one special child is great! What a priviledged teacher I am.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Easter
Discovering the Bible has great meaning for Amy and me. We read the Bible stories in My Favorite Bible Storybook for Early Readers by Carolyn Larsen and then we read the relevant passages in the "real" Bible (New Life Bible - a very contemporary version). We choose a relevant Bible verse, which she painstakingly copies by hand and then illustrates. In this way, she understands the stories better, but also realises that they come out the Bible and are not just stories. We try to choose verses that have relevance on how we should live. For instance, yesterday we discussed how we hurt Jesus: if we, like Judas, love money more than Jesus, if we like Peter pretend we do not know Jesus and lie, if we, like the crowd, do not believe Jesus is the Son of God. (Matthew 27: 4, Matt 26: 74, Matt 27: 22, 39-40). Amy enjoys looking up the verses. (Going to the index, finding the right Bible book and verse.) The repetitive writing of Bible verses has not only helped her understanding, but her handwriting and spelling have improved much as an extra benefit. Not only are her Bible files a joy to look at, but we often refer back to previous scripture and meanings that she has written down in them e.g. the ten rules, what obedience means, what sin is, what love is (1 Cor. 13). Amy is growing spiritually. In the beginning she was to shy to pray and if she did, she whispered inaudibly. Today after talking about why Jesus died on the cross (John 3 : 16), she asked that we pray... Jesus is faithful! May we all have a blessed Easter!
Monday, March 17, 2008
Mastering sight words with ease.
Before we started homeschooling in January, I asked Amy to give me a book that she would like to read. She chose "My Secret Unicorn: Dreams come true" (I do not have the book in front of me and cannot recall the author now, but anyway it is a series of books about a pony, Twilight, that can be turned into a unicorn.) Amy loves horses and fairy tales, so the story is just right for her. However, the vocabulary is quite difficult to master: to read it, to understand some of the concepts and to pronounce many of the words e.g. managing, exclaimed, electricity. (English is not her homelanguage.)
The first day of school we made a "deal" that we she would be able to read this favourite book all by herself, by the end of the year. I was concerned because the book seemed a bit too difficult and I was afraid she would become discouraged. However, so far, so good. We manage to read about one new page per week. This does not sound like much, but compared to what she was able to read last year, and what she is able to read now, it is considerable. (It helps that she is not ADD - she can concentrate if she wants to!) We are now on page 14.
Our method:
1. New words: I go through the new page and make three identical lists of all the new words + old words she still struggles with. One set of new words is on paper with an open space next to the word. The other two lists I print on different coloured carton and cut them up: one set for her, and one for me.
2. Matching: I then show her a new word e.g. "totally" and ask her to put "totally" next to "totally" on the sheet of paper. While she searches for the word, I make up oral sentences with the word e.g "Everyone totally agrees that you are a very good cook."
3. Choosing: After she has matched all the words (about 26 words per page), I again show her my flash cards one by one and ask her to find the word on the paper. Then I ask her to find the words without me showing her the flash card. I continue with this until she can indicate the words easily. (If she gets stuck, I quickly show her the flash card again.)
4. Naming: I then show her the flash cards one by one and she reads (names) them. The ones she can't read, go on a separate heap and we revise them again. She also writes down the difficult words to improve visualisation and memory.
5. Practicing reading: Then we build sentences with the new words and previous words. In the beginning we used the actual word cards, which were sorted into an alphabetical "dictionary". It was fun, but a bit time consuming to find the right words. Now I just make up sentences with the words on a white board. I use the same words over and over until she remembers them easily. She loves reading these sentences and ask that I write about "Amy". A typical sentence would be: "Amy's mother expects her to be ready at 16:00 for their visit at the nearby farm." (New words: expects, ready, visit, nearby, farm.)
6. Only when she shows that she can read (and understand) the new words in context, do we read the actual book: first together (i.e. I read and she follows with her finger) and then she reads it aloud by herself. By this time, she can usually read it reasonably fluently.
7. Homework: The last exercise is a comprehension: I type the whole passage, but leave out words for her to fill in from the text in the book. The words to be filled in are mostly high frequency words like "ago", "again" etc. rather than difficult words. Then I ask a few questions to determine comprehension:"Why did the family move the farm?" "When did they move to the farm?" Amy finds these questions still very hard, but we are getting there. I think it is very important that all reading should be linked to comprehension as well.
I know this method works - not only for Amy. I also did it with small groups in my class last year and then words were vere basic. First set of words: fat, cat, mat, hat, man, sat. With these words we made sentences like" fat cat sat on man" "fat man sat on hat" (Who sat on the man? Where did the man sit etc.)
Isn't teaching just the greatest job? Especially if there are no playground duty and staff meetings!
The first day of school we made a "deal" that we she would be able to read this favourite book all by herself, by the end of the year. I was concerned because the book seemed a bit too difficult and I was afraid she would become discouraged. However, so far, so good. We manage to read about one new page per week. This does not sound like much, but compared to what she was able to read last year, and what she is able to read now, it is considerable. (It helps that she is not ADD - she can concentrate if she wants to!) We are now on page 14.
Our method:
1. New words: I go through the new page and make three identical lists of all the new words + old words she still struggles with. One set of new words is on paper with an open space next to the word. The other two lists I print on different coloured carton and cut them up: one set for her, and one for me.
2. Matching: I then show her a new word e.g. "totally" and ask her to put "totally" next to "totally" on the sheet of paper. While she searches for the word, I make up oral sentences with the word e.g "Everyone totally agrees that you are a very good cook."
3. Choosing: After she has matched all the words (about 26 words per page), I again show her my flash cards one by one and ask her to find the word on the paper. Then I ask her to find the words without me showing her the flash card. I continue with this until she can indicate the words easily. (If she gets stuck, I quickly show her the flash card again.)
4. Naming: I then show her the flash cards one by one and she reads (names) them. The ones she can't read, go on a separate heap and we revise them again. She also writes down the difficult words to improve visualisation and memory.
5. Practicing reading: Then we build sentences with the new words and previous words. In the beginning we used the actual word cards, which were sorted into an alphabetical "dictionary". It was fun, but a bit time consuming to find the right words. Now I just make up sentences with the words on a white board. I use the same words over and over until she remembers them easily. She loves reading these sentences and ask that I write about "Amy". A typical sentence would be: "Amy's mother expects her to be ready at 16:00 for their visit at the nearby farm." (New words: expects, ready, visit, nearby, farm.)
6. Only when she shows that she can read (and understand) the new words in context, do we read the actual book: first together (i.e. I read and she follows with her finger) and then she reads it aloud by herself. By this time, she can usually read it reasonably fluently.
7. Homework: The last exercise is a comprehension: I type the whole passage, but leave out words for her to fill in from the text in the book. The words to be filled in are mostly high frequency words like "ago", "again" etc. rather than difficult words. Then I ask a few questions to determine comprehension:"Why did the family move the farm?" "When did they move to the farm?" Amy finds these questions still very hard, but we are getting there. I think it is very important that all reading should be linked to comprehension as well.
I know this method works - not only for Amy. I also did it with small groups in my class last year and then words were vere basic. First set of words: fat, cat, mat, hat, man, sat. With these words we made sentences like" fat cat sat on man" "fat man sat on hat" (Who sat on the man? Where did the man sit etc.)
Isn't teaching just the greatest job? Especially if there are no playground duty and staff meetings!
Monday, March 10, 2008
Life Skills and motivation to learn academic work
The advantage of home schooling is that there is no set time table or curriculum, so we can adapt learning to Amy's specific needs of the day. The day after she learned how to send an email, she said she ate chips (crisps) for breakfast. This lead to a discussion of the food groups. To corroborate my hastily compiled chart, I got Amy to use a search engine to find an article on food groups. Amy was quite keen to work on the internet again. Her reading ability is not good enough yet, to really search through the various options, but just to get the search engine to search was in itself is a good beginning! (She printed the chosen article and we'll get back to it, when the need arises to talk about food groups again.)
The day after we practised international time i.e. that 16:00 is 4:00 pm., her mom emailed that she would be seeing her at 16:00. I don't think Mom even thought for a minute that for a child who has only been reading time for about 6 months, 16:00 does not automatically translate into 4 o'clock. Fortunately, we had been practicing how to convert international time to "ordinary" time and vice versa, so Amy could work out when he Mom would be coming home!
The point I am trying to make is that by concentrating on the specific math's and reading needed for life skills like reading the calendar, the weather forecast, the clock, recipe measurements etc., the child is motivated to master them. Once the child turns on his/ her own motors there is no saying how far one could go. Finding that what you learn and practice in the classroom, is actually used in the shops, in the kitchen, in the car etc. makes you feel you belong in the real world.
Homeschooling is great! Thank you God for giving us this opportunity!
The day after we practised international time i.e. that 16:00 is 4:00 pm., her mom emailed that she would be seeing her at 16:00. I don't think Mom even thought for a minute that for a child who has only been reading time for about 6 months, 16:00 does not automatically translate into 4 o'clock. Fortunately, we had been practicing how to convert international time to "ordinary" time and vice versa, so Amy could work out when he Mom would be coming home!
The point I am trying to make is that by concentrating on the specific math's and reading needed for life skills like reading the calendar, the weather forecast, the clock, recipe measurements etc., the child is motivated to master them. Once the child turns on his/ her own motors there is no saying how far one could go. Finding that what you learn and practice in the classroom, is actually used in the shops, in the kitchen, in the car etc. makes you feel you belong in the real world.
Homeschooling is great! Thank you God for giving us this opportunity!
Electronic communication is really thrilling!
Last week I helped Amy to open an email address - she had to do everything herself, from plugging in the modem to opening "compose" to type her very first email. Her mom was thrilled. For a child who struggles to read, it was amazing how fast she could she find terms like "inbox", "send", "subject" etc. on the screen! She sent her first email to her Mom. Subject "Surprise!". Mother, me and Amy herself were all surprised by how well she could do it. Her homework of course was to send an email to me! Amy also enjoys SMS's, but Emails are far more satisfactory. At least they do not disappear as eaily from the screen as have happened in the past with painstakingly typed SMS's. (Mom and Dad, she typed a grand SMS to you, thanking you for her birthday party, but something went wrong when she tried to send it - what a dissapointment.) It took us much longer than the usual reading of math's lesson time, to get the email up and running, but the amount of reading and typing she did was the same (or more) than she would have done in a "normal" reading lesson. The big difference here was, that she was really motivated to master this. If a child is motivated, there is no saying what he/ she could achieve. Last year Amy was an emotional, stuttering "mentally handicapped" child. (See background, posted February 2008). This year she is just a bundle of untapped potential that is waiting to be discovered. God has a very special task for her and it is for us to discover what it is and how to get her there!
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