Hello Everyone!

I hope you all had a great weekend. Mine was fairly quiet, but none diminished for that! It has been five weeks since I left home, and what I find really hard to believe is that I only have two more weeks in Pretoria. I'm still trying to wrap my head around that, actually; time has absolutely flown.

Other than mowing a lawn and practically burning out the engine within fifteen minutes, and especial highlight of my days at Viva this week was having the opportunity to watch the reading evaluations for several Viva students. We are currently using a program called SOUNS, which teaches kids to read phonetically by teaching them to attach sounds, not letter names, to letters. (So instead of learning to say "tee" when they see "t," they learn to say "tuh"). SOUNS introduces large plastic letters to kids as young as 2 1/2 or 3 years old and introduces them a few at a time until they master the sounds and can identify the letters. I was able to sit in with the teachers while they tested groups of kids, and it is incredible how fast those kids learn--some of the four year olds were able to spell out five or six letter words for us just by listening carefully to the sounds! If they're motivated, being great readers will enable them to learn anything they want to, no matter what their circumstances.

Have a wonderful week, you all! I plan to! Johanna