Class 2

We end our year in late November, early December. So as you are all starting your new year in America we are starting to finish up our year.

I thought I would share a little bit of what Sheth and I have done this year.

We have done Saints, and animal stories. I have not done as much as I would have liked as I have had one of the busiest and most emotional years of my life.

We have learned a lot of poems in English and also Afrikaans, as it is our second language.We have made a lovely poetry book. I wrote the poems in and Sheth decorated the pages.

We have been working on family words. I never did this with my other children. It has made a huge difference with learning to read. We have done almost 50 of them. We will just keep adding the family words to our special book, as we do more and more.

Sheth also revised his vowel caterpillar and drew it in his family word book.

I have been using the grade 1 readers from the LLATL blue book series. I have not had time to make readers this year so I improvised. I have not used the LLATL curriculum, just the readers.

We have other readers appropriate for his reading level that he will read and then circle articles in brown, underline nouns in blue, pronouns in purple and verbs in red. He is really good at this and enjoys doing it.

We have done maths using the Waldorf outline. Column addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Sheth has learned to carry numbers in addition and subtraction. We have worked on time - being seasons, years, months, weeks and days.

Sheth has also been learning his times tables. This needs lots of practice and even Caleb who is in grade 7 still needs to practice them. Times tables are the basis to ALL maths problems (or to ALL maths solutions).

We have had fun and we are working to finish off our year.

Teaching vowels, grade 1.

Today Sheth and I learnt about how special vowels are. We started off by making a vowel caterpillar. This is hanging on the wall so that we can see it all the time. We have a tiny tail piece that has Y in it, for those special occasions.

I then told Sheth that every word has to have a vowel in it. I asked him to give me words to write down and then he underlined the vowels. This was fun and he loved doing it.

We then sang our vowel sounds and we tried to hold the sound as long as possible.

He proceeded to read 4 early readers to me. When he was finished I gave him a treat and sent him outside to play.

Language curriculum: Afrikaans

Well, Afrikaans is the second language our children in South Africa must learn. It is an interesting language as it is only spoken in South Africa. Well, that depends, now that I think about it. If you are being rude about someone in Afrikaans when you are oversees, in general they respond in Afrikaans! This has become VERY common with a lot of South Africans emigrating to other countries. So be aware you do not get caught out.

The other thing is a lot of people believe it is a dying language. I find this to be very sad if it is true as it is a unique language.

I have been looking for an Afrikaans program for about six years now and was unable to find one that I could use, and enjoy using till the beginning of this year. I hope this information is useful to you. Enjoy!

I use the afrikaans curriculum, Pret met Afrikaans.
Contact details are:

• Tel: 031-312 5052
• Cell: 083-255 3442
• Fax: 031-303 5916
• Website: www.pretmetafrikaans.co.za 
• Email: sales@pretmetafrikaans.co.za

There are 6 levels.
Grade one to three:
1. Laer graad: consisting of four books.
2. Reeks een: consisting of eight books.
Grades three to five:
3. Reeks twee: consisting of eight books.
Grades four to six:
4. Reeks drie: consisting of seven books.
Grades five to seven:
5. Reeks vier: consisting of eight books.
Grades six to seven:
6. Reeks vyf: consisting of seven books.

I ordered a full set per child. Three sets. The total payment was about R300.00 to R400.00. It is so economic! You do not have to order all the books like I did, but I am just pedantic about having to have every thing that I need for schooling on hand, as I learn it before I bring it to my children.

The children are realy enjoying the program and learning Afrikaans. There are poems, songs and pictures to colour in. The kids enjoy learning the poems and songs, and as they colour in the pictures they are reading the work. This helps them to remember it.

We bought the, "Smile" Afrikaans curriculum a few years ago and it was horrible compared to this program. I did not understand it, so asked my Afrikaans neighbour for help with it and she told me that it made no sense. We did not use the program after that.