First days of 2nd Term: Elections!

Besides our school vacation, we have had many public holidays in April: 22 April was Election Day, 27 April was Freedom Day (to commemorate our first truly democratic Election 15 years ago) and Friday 1 May is Workers Day. Last week we had two days of school and then I took off the rest of the week to go to the sea with my children (after we first voted of course!). So this is our "2nd week" of school, but actually today has only been our 3rd day of school this term. We could get used to have so many days off!

Last week Tammy and I spent a lot of time calculating how many people would vote if the voter percentage was 80%, 70%, 60% etc. based on the actual number of registered voters. (23,180,000). The ruling party i.e. the A.N.C. had a 2/3 majority after the last elections and that meant that they could change the constitution by themselves. To ensure true democracy, it was hoped that they would not get a 2/3 majority again. We have a very high crime rate and service delivery throughout the country is deteriorating and in many places virtually non-existent. In these aspects, the country is a mess and change is desperately needed if we are not to share the lot of Zimbabwe.

Anyway, it was good talking to Tamerin about the importance of voting and how the parliamentary seats would be allocated. Today, we studied the real results ("results" and "statistics" were today's new words) and then Tamerin "practised" speaking about the results.

She again did a lot of % calculations - from very simple ones e.g. 10% of 100 and 10% of 200 to 65.9% of 17,680.729 i.e. the election results. The complicated ones she did with a calculator of course! She also calculated percentage the other way around e.g. 40/ 50 x 100 =80% . Here too she worked from very simple calculations to real election results i.e. 11,650,748 out of 17,680.729 (the A.N.C.'s results) and 2,945,829 out of 17,680.729 (the D.A.'s i.e. the main opposition's results) It was good to see that her calculations were the same as the official statistics!

So what did she learn in this theme?

• What elections are about and a basic understanding of how our government is put together.
• The importance of voting: the higher the voter percentage, the more votes are needed to get a seat in parliament.
• What an I.D. document is.
• The voting process
  
• To read figures that run into hundred thousands or millions. A million has six zero's!
  
• To calculate % and to have a basic understanding of percentages e.g. 50% is half.
• These % calculations helped to reinforce basic arithmetic: multiply and divide.
  

Tammy has been familiar with the term "percent" for a long time, as she daily records the weather forecast and it often includes 30% or 60% chance of rain. Since January, I let her calculate her homework results i.e. calculate how many sums she did, subtract the mistakes, and work out the percentage that she achieved. Working with percentages is not difficult, but an important life skill and I am thrilled with how well she copes with them. We can now go on to work out discounts and interest rates.

Thank you God for Tammy's good progress!

P.S. Tammy wrote (with help) on her blog about the election results. This helped her to verbalize her election information as she would explain it to her Ouma.

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

Spelling that works for us

Tammy's reading is picking up - we have changed our method quite a bit from our previous sight reading method and it seems to work. We read a piece together and Tammy has to follow with her finger and read aloud too. In this way I immediately pick up if she lags behind. Sometimes I stop and let her read a word alone, especially if it is a word she has recently learned. We do not have a graded reader, but read anything that she fancies from the Bible to the newspaper to High School Musical and Zac Efron's annual and webpages. In this way, she becomes familiar with a great variety of words and expressions.

We stop our reading quite often too discuss what we have read. If I don't do this, she doesn't pick up the story line. New words or words she has forgotten are written down on a small white board. I often let her look up the word in the Oxford S.A. school dictionary. We make sentences to explain the meaning of the word e.g Tammy is a resident of M...... Minh is a resident of S..... etc. (If you are new to this blog: Tammy is mentally challenged and English is her 2nd language.)

When the board is more or less full, we go through the list again. I.e. she reads the words and words are explained again if needs be. Long words are broken up in sections to help with pronunciation. I try to use syllables that she knows well and add the prefixes and suffixes. For example today we had recently. I wrote down cent (a word she knows well!) and had her read it. Then I added re and then ly. No problem! We also had attended. I wrote down ten for her to read and then added the rest. Again no problem.

If she struggles with pronunciation, we add similar (known) words to help e.g. when she struggled with malicious, I added delicious; She struggled to remember the pronunciation of au words e.g audition and applause, so I added August with which she is very familiar. This works like a charm. She had some problems with long and short vowels, but here again, I would give her familiar examples like use and us, at and ate. We have never bothered about rules, bus she is "discovering" rules as we go along.

Then she writes the spelling as in a spelling test, but if she hesitates, I quickly show her the word again. There is absolutely no point in ever misspelling a word, merely for the sake of a test. I find that in the twenty words or so, it is very seldom necessary to show her the word again. She spells with ease words like immediately, atmosphere, dedicated etc.

Lastly she reads the piece all by herself. It is heartening to see how she "makes out" the words. Fluency and comprehension improve all the time.

One of those school days....

For about two months now, Tammy and I have been very going to the water aerobics class at the gym every day at 8:00. It is well worth is, but it makes a big dent in our teaching time, so to save time, we put on our swimming costumes (yes that is what we call them here in South Africa) under our regular clothes. I was just about to leave for work when I saw I had an SMS from Tammy's mom - its that time of the month, so Tammy can't swim. O.K. so out with the cozzy and on with gym pants and tackies. I take a small towel and leave my big gym bag - I'm not going to need that....! I finally leave, but am now 5 minutes late.

Five km down the road, I realize my gym locker key and more importantly my access card are still in my gym bag, so I have to turn back, unlock the gate again and retrieve bag - now about 12 minutes late.

When I get to the toll gate 30 minutes later, an alarm rings: my E-tag was upside down, so it has not registered at the gate - I have to reverse and the irate official tells me I can't go through, because the gate has now been locked. (She unlocks it for the other cars, why not me?) Oh what embarrasment! I have to push my way in another queue! I can just imagine everyone swearing at the dumb woman who goes in the E-tag only lane without an E-tag! Another few minutes wasted!

Once trapped on the highway, the traffic moves at snail's pace: another accident. I try to phone Tammy to get going with some work as I certainly am not going to make it in time. (Fortunately today we do not have to be at the gym at exactly 8:00!) Tammy does not answer. I try a few times more: no luck. I can just imagine her sitting in front of the T.V., oblivious to her ringing phone, which is probably in the kitchen. I fume.

Once at their house I am not in a good mood and hate myself for being so grumpy with Tammy. She doesn't know where her gym record book is, she hasn't done the weather yet, she hasn't done her homework and I don't feel too good about this day!

But God gives me the grace to calm down. In the car I ask her some questions about Global warming that we discussed yesterday. She answers beautifully. I ask her what she would like to talk about today and she says "Parties". "What party?"... "No, political parties." (She struggles a bit to say political, but says it clearly enough.) Bless my soul! We have discussed them a bit before as we have an election coming up in April. We have a glorious trip to the gym, talking about Jacob Zuma and the possibility that the prosecuting authority will stop the prosecution. She remembers that he is accused of CORRUPTION! And that he is the leader of the A.N.C and will be the next president! What a clever girl you are Tammy! What a joy to teach.

At the gym I measure her waist for the first time in a long time: she has lost quite a few centimetres around her waist: she still has a long way to go, but the aerobics are paying dividents. When we do spinning she generally seems fitter than a month ago.

We pick up a free local newspaper on our way back to their house. She chooses an article to read - Kind hands save a dog. New vocabulary out of this piece are words such as dedicated staff, comfortable, treatment, resident.

During tea-time she reads a piece out of her Zac Efron Annual to her grandmother: she does us proud as she reads fairly fluently and with understanding. Between some more reading and multiplication, she practices guitar. Yesterday she was lethargic during her lesson and plucked the strings very halfheartedly. Today however, she manages reasonably well to alternate plucking with her index finger and her middle finger. And she counts of own accord 1,2,3,4, 1,2,3,4 A great improvement.

A bit of a dissapointment was when she no longer wants to practice a dramatisation of the cruxifiction. She has originally chosen this piece to prepare for Easter, but for some unknown reason she now backs off. I hate leaving a project hanging in the air, but also realize that it will be futile to persevere with something she has lost interest in. She is keen enough to just read the scripture and I am grateful for that. God will give us another theme for her to dramatize and to perform. (Dramatisation really helps with her speech, but I feel pushing her will be destructive.)

Thank you God for days like this! Even if it started off on the wrong foot! And please forgive my foul temper! Please grant me more patience God!

Fractions

This week we did some division with remains. Tammy struggled a bit with this, so we used the number line and piled the threes / fours onto the right spots: 3, 6, 9, 15 etc. She could then easily count how many threes there were in 28 etc. The remains were always expressed as a fraction e.g. 16/3 = 5 and 1/3. In the beginning she confused 1/3 and 2/3 but she soon caught up and "loved" this work.
However, I picked up that her tables were a bit rusty. This surprised me, because she really knew them exceptionally well: not only in sequence, but also when asked at random. Anyway to make "math" a bit easier we are back onto multiplication, but this time "longer" multiplication e.g.
27
x5
135

We converted miles to kilometers. (1 Mile = 1.6 km). She liked this. This was necessary to understand High School Musical 3 better and also to help her prepare for the U.S. trip and in any case it is problem solving and practice in multiplication and decimals.

She is busy writing a letter to Zac Efron. Formulating questions is still very difficult for her, but we are working on it. Spelling and reading ability are improving by the day, but she still needs a lot of guidance with comprehension. (There has been a vast improvement, but she still needs considerable practice before she will really be able to read a book on her own just for fun.).

Other new activities include water aerobics and swimming lessons and guitar lessons. In all of these she shows promise. (I will blog about these activities later.) Right now we are waiting for her guitar instructor. She has just had her 3rd swimming lesson. After lunch break she came up to finish her Zac Efron letter, but since I started blogging during break (and thus occupy the computer), I asked her to start on the multiplication homework work sheet so long. Guess what she said? "I would like to do division by 3...!"

She has done 3 multiplication problems while I've been typing this paragraph, but she forgot to add the tens, so I'd better stop babbling and help her.

Homeschooling is great! Have a great week.

A visit to the U.S.?

Tammy's family might visit the U.S. in June. Even if they don't go, planning for it, is great fun and gives us lots of scope for learning themes.
The past week we spent quite a bit of time on converting U.S.D to South African Rand. The average currency last week was $1= R10. 50. How much is $6? Multiply with 10 and add 1/2 of the dollar value. Then check the answer on the calculator! What bliss! The exercise meant revising

• what to do when you multiply with 10 (add a zero or move the decimal point)
• odd and even numbers. 1/2 of an odd number means there must be a half (a .5), but even numbers divide cleanly - no half.
  
• adding e.g. 70 + 3. (For a while she was a bit confused and would say 100 i.e. she mixed the ones and tens, but she soon caught up again.)

By Friday she was able to convert $1 - $10 to ZAR mentally - no more adding on paper! She was very proud of herself and I am curious to see how well she fares on Monday. "How much is $5?" "R52.50!" Without hesitation! Hurrah!

Reading exercises were found in the Disney World website. She searched for the website and then clicked on "animal world". We copied the text onto word and now she did comprehension on sections she chose e.g. discovery. (As I write this, I haven't got the info in front of me - it's on their computer, but I hope you get the drift.)

Other work was discussing (and watching) cricket and checking live scores. How much must S.A. score to beat Australia? (Subtraction) How does the coach indicate it was a four / a six?

For rugby (the Super 14 tournament is well underway and the Blue Bulls of Pretoria are doing very well so far), we checked where the different teams come from and how many points are awarded for a try, the conversion kick, and a penalty.

School is fun!

Tamerin's birthday and reading

Tamerin's 14th birthday was a great occasion. We went to see the South African stage version of High School Musical and she and friends were enthralled. Such a happy day. She blogged about it here. (To any South Africans who might be reading this post, the show is well worthwhile.)

I gave her a Zac Efron (the main actor in the HSM movie) book and below are a few short video clips of how we go about reading it. As we did last year, we still:

1. Match words (look at the word and hear it and match it to the correct word on the base sheet).

2. Choose and show words (hearing the word and finding it, without an example.)

3. Sight read the words individually (flash cards).

4. Write the words.

5. Read sentences.

The words are chosen from text she wants to or needs to read: i.e. they are most of the new words in a particular piece and include words I know she has struggled with before.

What I find very satisfying is that Tammy is now better able to split up a word in syllables and read it syllable by syllable instead of just guessing the word. When we come to a difficult word, I write down the "bits"and we practice saying it, bit by bit. Not only does it help much with pronunciation, but I find that in the end she can actually spell words like inevitably, mischievous, initial, relationship. (Bearing in mind that she is supposed to be mentally handicapped, this is quite an achievement.)

Pronunciation is improving - very slowly, but surely. The HSM dialogue she and her brother did on her birthday party went quite well, but unfortunately the video clip is not too clear - they were pretty much silhouetted against the light. I will keep the clips though, as they will help me to evaluate progress in speech later this year. It is already light years better than 20 months ago, when I first met her.

"Gabriella" arriving at her new school.

Matching words

Choosing words

Flash cards

Writing out new words

Reading Zac Efron's Annual.