April 2013 Updates: Hahgoot’s News, Part 2 (These are birds in the school yard: Left – cockatoos Right – a raven with a golf ball in its beak)

Hahgoot was a bit unwell this month and spent a couple of evenings resting on the sofa and reading the great “Our Australian Girl” series instead of doing homework. Alma was thrilled she could check a real patient... With real tummy aches and fever!

Hahgoot kept up her correspondence with Noam from Haifa (left) and relaxed with a “My Little Pony” workbook (right)

Barak tried again to teach Hahgoot some chess. He read with her one chess book and I worked with another, starting from the basics.

Top left: to practice strategic thinking, Hahgoot played a game of queen versus pawns with Barak. The person who was really interested in participating was Alma... So she got her own chess set to play with. Hahgoot looked spaced out most of the time.

The BJE studies finished for the term (left) but Hahgoot got some extra material thanks to Penrith library: she read a book about “the synagogue” (top right) and an ABC book about Egypt, following Passover (bottom right). She made a Kartush with hieroglyphs.

In Hebrew Hahgoot got seriously hooked on the Ms Wiz series by Terence Blacker, who was translated as “Kitty Kuntz”. She read the three chapter books in record time: the first book took a few days, but the second was read in two sittings and the third in one go!

In her Hebrew studies Hahgoot continued to enjoy the poetry workbook, along with maths and grammar workbooks from our latest trip, and read Pilon stories.

Hahgoot really enjoyed all the maths workbooks from Israel. I bought her mainly unusual workbooks, for gifted children and summer assignment worksheets, so they are all riddles and fun short tasks. Got Hahgoot to write in Hebrew at last – and she wrote a beautiful poem about a colourful bird!

While in Hebrew Hahgoot reads as a year 2- 3 student in Israel (which is fantastic) in English she reads books for much older kids. She spent two weeks tirelessly reading the classic “A little princess” by Frances Hodgson Burnett and really liked it. she got the message that we are all “princesses on the inside” and your character and qualities are more important than looks or wealth – wish they get this message out more today! To get Hahgoot to decide if she wanted to read a classic book, I got her to read excerpts from an anthology of classic tales for girls (bottom right).

The school term ended with a school disco, which she enjoyed. Alma of course had to dress up nicely too...

After the disco, regaining her sensory balance (and Alma copies, of course...)

In our next presentation: artistic adventures!