Verona Strauss.comjust because life is fun! …

Mary's thank you letter to me

This week I had a letter, photo and school report card from Mary Joyce.

Mary Joyce is 8 and will be 9 in December. I sponsor her over in the Philippines through the Philippine Community Fund. You might remember me telling you about some of the lovely products the clever people in the Philippines make. They make bags, aprons and purses from things we normally throw away such as ring pulls, crisp packets and magazines.

Mary Joyce is doing really well at school. She is second in her class and she says out of all the things she is most grateful for from the money we send, it’s food. That really made me think. Don’t you think her writing in English is brilliant? I couldn’t write one word of Filipino

Mary Joyce

Patiently counting drops and seeing how long it takes to fill a tablespoon with dripping water

I don’t like it when the tap is dripping because I think it wastes water. Today I wondered how long it would take to fill our washing up bowl with water one drip at a time and how many drips it took to fill the bowl.

Mummy said we would find out straight away and we had to do some big maths sums with a calculator! I like using the calculator.

I stood with a tablespoon under the dripping tap to see how long it took to fill. Mummy timed me and it took 1 minute and 57 seconds.

Next we used a measuring jug to see how much water our washing up bowl held. It held 9 litres.

Then I had to use the calculator to see how many tablespoons of water it would take to fill our bowl.

That is 9000mls shared by (divided by) 15mls which was 600.

Then I had to do 600 lots of (times) 1 minute 57 seconds which was 70,200 seconds. Mummy asked me if that was a good answer.

I said no because it didn’t mean anything to me.

So I shared (divided) that answer by 60 because there are 60 seconds in a minute and got 1,170 minutes.

Mummy asked me if that was a good answer and I said No!

So we shared it by 60 again because there are 60 minutes in an hour and got 19 1/2 hours.

That’s nearly one whole day, but I still think it is a waste and people should make sure their taps aren’t dripping. Because if we all do it, it adds up to a lot of water being wasted.

Rebecca from Hemage Hospital

Introduction

Hemage Hospital is a large friendly place. Young nurse Rebecca helps people not to feel so scared and as well as her jobs, she spends time with worried people. She is a kind girl and is hardly ever late for medical jobs.

Story

It was a busy day, the doorbell rang non stop and nurses were rushing everywhere. Poor Elaine had to take care of six people and two of them were really ill.

Fortunately for Rebecca she only had one and managed not too badly. it was an elderly man with a broken bone, much to Rebecca’s distress. She found the old man, gave him painkillers and began. It was tiring work especially when the man, who’s name was Peter, began groaning again. But at last it was done and Rebecca was pleased.

That night Rebecca felt very pleased with her work. Later on that day she had done a check up on a young lady before she left the hospital for good. As she lay in bed that night she thought about how lucky she was working only part time in such a lovely hospital. She had always enjoyed working there and it was fun; just right for her.

“Work is the best!” she thought in her head, and she fell asleep to pleasant dreams of reading her favourite book in front of the fire.