Understanding highest and lowest, more, most, less and least.

Tamerin enters the weather of the day on her calendar every morning. At the end of the month, she types in the highest maximum temperature of the month, the lowest max, the lowest minimum, number of cloudy, party cloudy, rainy and sunny days on her weather chart on excel. Every month she struggles to determine which temperature is highest / lowest. She knows the number line very well, so this is strange - until I realized that she struggles with the concepts of higher, lower, more, less. Her problem here is more a language problem than a math's problem!

Today after struggling to determine which day was the coldest and the hottest, I made tables for her where she simply had to determine between two numbers in a row, which one is the highest and mark it with red. Then we did the same with lowest number, but this time she had to mark the answer with blue. She seemed to grasp this easily enough, but I plan many more exercises with more and less and higher and lower numbers.

Booking tickets for Cinderella

Tamerin and I will go to see a show tomorrow morning. We booked seats yesterday on the internet. Tammy typed in Computicket in the search block, then searched for Cinderella, pulled down Gauteng for the area etc. She had to type in her email address, her card number etc. so she had losts of practice in filling in a computer form (again). She also had to do that when she started her blogs, so she is getting quite an old hand at it! The only dissapointment was that Computicket only takes credit cards and not debit cards, so her booking attempt was rejected and I had to do the paying. Nonetheless it was a good fun exercise.

Her typing for her blog has improved a lot. She is retyping all her verses from the beginning of the year - today we finished the Easter verses. I was rather upset this morning when I came to school and found that she had not done her typing homework - she was supposed to have typed three verses. She switched on the computer, but at the end of the file (where I expected to see the newly typed verses) there was nothing. I was really cross, because she had said that she had done it! I let her do the typing in class and went out to fume a bit. I came back and was delighted with her typing and she was very sorry etc. But.... when we went through the whole file with her to make some changes to the headings so that she could insert a table of contents, I found all the homework verses - typed here, there and everywhere among the previously typed verses! So she had done her homework, but not in the right place. This has happened before with paper homework too: she files it anywhere and then it is a big search to find it! I think after today she will be more careful. At least I hope so!

Reading progress

Today Tamerin did a lot of typing again. She read 3 pages out of My Secret Unicorn by Linda Chapman and that before we practised the words for those pages! She got stuck on about 3 words on a page. Up to now we've concentrated on sight reading e.g. we would match, choose and then only read the words, before she tackled the page in her book. Her sight reading has now expanded so much, that we no longer have to "practice" 20 words before trying to read a page. The book is a little bit difficult, but that is the one that she chose at the beginning of the year and her motivation is quite high. She really tries hard. I am excited that soon she will be able to read the other books in the series on her own. At least that is what I am hoping will happen.

Thank you God, for Tamerin's progress in reading!

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.

Our Real Names

With Tamerin's parents' permission, we now blog under our real names: Miekie and Tamerin. When the schools reopen in July I'll have a photo taken of me and Tamerin, so you can see what we look like. Except for deciding to go public, everything in the blog remains the same. I'll publish Tamerin's (alias Amy's) diary next week and after that, she will do it herself. I think she will really enjoy having her own blog. She loves writing her diary. She still does it with my help, but her own input (content, sentence construction, spelling etc.) improves steadily.

This is our winter break. I use the time to catch up on some home chores and to prepare for my daughter Thelwyn's baby. The baby is due the end of July. Dorette's baby, Franco, my first grandchild, was born in April and I have offered to make his clothes for his "christening". (The child will be blessed and not baptized, but to me it is more or less the same thing.) Anyway I started with some trepidation.... it is a long time since I have sewn for a baby!

I also plan to work out some conversations for Tamerin. Communication is still the biggest stumbling block and I have some new ideas to deal with basic expression. Will let you know....

Climbing on the rocks

Yesterday afternoon Amy did not have friends so I wanted us to go for a walk again. She said she would rather play ball! I was rather baffled because neither of us is good with a ball. We played "rugby" i.e. we had to pass the ball backwards and in running. After passing you had to run forwards so that you could pass the ball backwards again. It meant more running than Amy has done the whole year.

We saw a balloon in the air and it seemed to be tied to the fence of an empty space next door. I was intrigued and wanted to see what was next to the fence. (On Google earth it looked like a reservoir) There's a heap of rocks in the back of the yard and I climbed on it to see better. Amy also climbed on it, but had to do so on all fours in the beginning. She really struggled to keep her balance and nearly fell. (I got quite a fright!). She then held my hand and I taught her how to walk on the rocks: make sure one foot is very secure before you move your other foot. She improved much and I think rock climbing will soon become part of our weekly routine.

I can get so caught up in "academics" that I forget the basics of learning and concentration i.e. balance, co-ordination and body imate still apply.

Finished skirt and Father's Day.

Amy has finished her skirt. Despite all our measuring and lengthening of the original pattern, the skirt would have been too short with a conventional hem, so I just let her sew in the hem with the machine. Folding over a cm, stitching it and then folding again and to pin and stitch it again, was difficult enough. Here and there she had to unpick to sew closer to the edge, but she is actually capable to sew very close to the folded edge! She seemed very proud when she put on the skirt, but on Monday it still lay on the school table. She never showed it to her Mom. ?? I wonder why. She still has to hand sew on tapes for a hanger, but at the moment we have a more pressing concern: the Father's Day Card!!
For Mother's Day she copied (by hand) verses out of Proverbs 31. For her Dad, she copied 1 Cor 13:7. At the end of the verse she wrote: Thank you for loving me like that! Her Dad is crazy about her and by employing me to home school her, it is obvious that he has hope for her, so I think the verses are appropriate. She practices to read the verses out loud to him. (Her reading lesson for the day)
She is now busy to type a letter to put in the card. Here are her reasons for loving him:
I love you because you always shower and smell so nice. You look so cool in your jeans and T-shirt. You brush my hair. You talk to me about shops and Wimpy. You call me when it is weather forecast. I am so proud of you because you work so hard and you pay for everything we need.
She did not come up with this all by herself, but through me guiding her thoughts with leading questions e.g. What makes your Daddy so special? What does he do? What does he do with you? Would you like it if he did not work and sat at home to watch T.V. all day?

After typing all this, of course she has to read it too!

We have focussed a little on how to draw - she is past the stage of spontaneous drawing (I always believe one should not teach little ones to draw, but just guide them through discussions and experiences). However, Amy's drawings are not going to improve of own accord. She is a sensitive child and drawing and painting can be outlets for self-expression. There are wonderful short videos on the internet giving guide lines on how to draw a face, a body etc. She has drawn some faces facing sideways and this is quite new for her. Today she is going to draw her Dad - not her usual pictures, but a special new one, using guidelines.

We also plan for her to do photography as another expression outlet. The plan is to insert a photo of herself in the Father's Day card as well.

So although Father's Day is still four school days away, we have had to get cracking already. This means other school work is standing still for a while, but we will catch up.