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Letters
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April 3, 2000
Don Spicer and the Friends of Lesotho,
I am writing to thank you for the grant FOL approved for my map painting project at the Tsoelang-Pele Primary School in TY. We were able to paint this series of maps in the Standard 7 classroom at school.
I worked in the afternoons and the children who were interested stayed and helped. A few of the students were really interested, helped me with and updated atlas and we labeled the African countries together. The Lesotho map has been especially a favorite - all the kids coming by and pointing out the districts they have visited, places their relatives live, and places they want to go. The idea that they can see and recognize Lesotho, then see it on the African map, and then find Africa on the world has been wonderful. A few of the children thought Australia was Lesotho until the maps were labeled. And even Antarctica turned out to be an interesting subject to both teachers and students who had never seen it on a map.
So thank you - the maps have been a great success and have given me, as a new volunteer, a good way to start feeling comfortable at my school. It was a nice tangible way to make the teachers feel the work they did to get a volunteer in TY was worth it and gives me time to settle into the teaching with a little less pressure. I really appreciate the effort that you all do to support our project here. Thank you very much, Tara Loyd
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| Tara Loyd
P.O. Box 186
Teyateyaneng 200
Lesotho
Southern Africa
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Don Spicer and the Friends of Lesotho,
Thank you for the latest donation for map painting at Tsoelang-Pele Community Primary School in Teyateyaneng. This time we painted the Standard 6 classroom wall with a huge world map that included all major rivers, mountains, mountain ranges, lakes, seas, the oceans, and the continents. We included, in correspondence with the Standard 6 curriculum, the lines of latitude and longitude and the Tropic of Cancer and Capricorn.
We have plans now, with the remaining money, to paint similar topographic maps in Standards 4 (Lesotho) and Standard 5 (Africa) so that by the time they reach Standard 7, the Lesotho, Africa, and world maps painted in February will serve as a review for them. Those maps picture just the district, country, and continent names without including significant geographical features. The kids, as always, enjoyed the project and send many thanks your way for the continued support you offer the current Lesotho volunteers. Enjoy the picture.
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December 18, 2000
Dear Don Spicer and Friends of Lesotho,
Thank you for your latest support of work we are doing at Tsoelang-Pele primary school in TY. I received a grant at the beginning of this school semester to create a communication book for a severely hearing impaired Standard 6 boy at school. His mother, teacher, and I sat down and completed a list of things we thought Palo might need to communicate that his limited writing ability and complete lack of verbal communication couldn't allow.
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He is such an intelligent boy that his teacher was sure his communication barrier was causing behavior that she and his mother were increasingly unable to control. Teaching him to sign when no on in his environment - family, friends, shop owners, etc... - is able to sign, seemed futile. So we created this method of communication as an attempt to open some options for him.
He has different choices of sentence strips in the front of his book that he can choose to combine with the different picture cards and verbs that are part of each page. FOL supplied the materials - velcro, glue, binder, etc. for the book itself. Palo is pictured here wearing his book as he is now supposed to do at all times. We are hoping that his already improved communication and much better control of behavior continues. Every time I've seen him in town he has definitely been excited and very proud of his book and options for communication. Thank you very much for your continued support of the work happening in Lesotho.
Tara Loyd
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