Bikram first, then a stop at the Friendly Place to see if they take old sleeping pillows. They do. I dropped off two. Then to Target to pick up some more pill pockets for Elsa. They were on sale. Buy 3, get one free. I grabbed that. I had been buying the pill pockets for cats. The pills are small; Elsa is small. I figured I could get more bang for my buck with the smaller pill pockets designed for cats. Also, Elsa loved the salmon flavor. I discovered Milk Bone’s pill pockets are the cheapest I can find, and I can quarter them. This makes the price very reasonable.
Home Depot was my next stop. I wanted to return the additional packet of replacement screws I bought for the Everbilt system for screwing down subflooring through carpeting. I knew Home Depot only had two more packages on the shelf, and I was going to need more. I checked Amazon and discovered that I could get over 2,000 screws for $25. The smaller packet with fifty screws that I returned cost $11.
I also checked on the cost of having the bisque toilet I was interested in at this Home Depot. I got the same sour-faced clerk I got the other day. It was not my fault she was a sour puss. I was smiling today. She checked it for me. The toilet in white, which is in the store, costs $176. Because I want the bisque one, and it has to be special ordered, the toilet will cost me $450. That is some impressive cost difference. I have to think about this.
I went home, did some work on the blog, took my shower, and checked my email. An email from the Apple Store told me that I had made a purchase for $49.99 for some game. I don’t think so. It said if I wanted to cancel the purchase to tap on this. I followed the lead. I had been suspicious from the start because the logo didn’t look like something I associated with Apple. I may be old and somewhat slow on the uptake. Fortunately, I know that if someone is asking for credit card information or my social security number. I am going to call that agency directly. When they asked for my credit card information, I stopped everything and called Apple’s customer service. The agent told me to check my credit card information to see if a purchase had been made. Okay, that was over my head. She checked it on her end and told me that there was no record of one. I was a victim of a phishing attempt—my first. The Apple agent thanked me for catching it and asked me to forward that email to her. I did my good deed for the day.
I headed out to school. First, I worked with B. in Mrs. D’s class. I worked with him on reading when we first started, but Mrs. D. asked me to switch to spelling. He has been a remarkably bad speller. Often his spelling made zero sense. There is no apparent relationship between the word and his spelling, either by sight or sound.
He said he had studied and known the words. I dictated them to him and observed. Oh, dear. Moreover, he couldn’t remember the repeated spelling patterns of the lesson. It was on regular plurals; each word ended with either -s or -es. Nonetheless, he would spell the final sound with either a z or an s, but not consistently.
I asked him if he saw the words in his head. He said no. I had worked with him on this before. Obviously, it hadn’t sunk in. I cut off a strip of paper and wrote the word trays on it. I held it up to his forehead after showing him the word and asked him to see the letters in his mind. While he was able to see the letters, they weren’t in the right order. I asked him if the letters were moving around. He said yes. We had done the spin release before. Obviously, it wasn’t enough. I proposed trying again. I asked him if he would like to try the work again. He said yes. He indicated that the letters spun around in the forehead area, the visual working memory, in a spin from the inside out following the right-hand rule. I had him do a release. I think I told him to release the spinning in the wrong direction. I told him to release outward from the forehead. With the spin in the direction it was, it should have been out the back of his head. Whatever, it seemed to make a difference.
Then I asked him to write the word, copying it from the image in his mind. He copied it correctly. We did this with 6 more words. I had him look at the word, see it in his mind’s eye, say the letters while looking at the image, and then write the word on paper.
After we had gone through each word once, I dictated all 6 to him in a row. He got 100%. Unheard of. I felt I had given him a study strategy for him to use. It will be interesting to see how he does on this week’s spelling test. Anything over 50% is a win.
Next, I worked with R. She read the story she had dictated to me the other day. I asked her if she wanted to read it to Mrs. D. She did. Mrs. D. was duly impressed. R. is making some improvements. It’s slow. When she went outside to work with me, she dictated another story and then did the StoryJigSawPuzzle with her first story. I went off to work with another student.
I grabbed N. He is having problems with comprehension. When he brings out a book, it is always on a 2nd-grade level. I have to go back in and get a P, which is a high third-grade level. His word recognition skills are excellent. He looked at the words on the page more consistently to find the answers. I still have to tell him when the answers are on the page versus something he has to figure out. When he looks at the words, his answers are consistently correct. I asked one question that referred to information that had come previously in the paragraph. He got it!!!! Wonderful.
I didn’t work with anyone in Mrs. B.’s class. I saw the class pack up and go somewhere while I was working with the kids from Mrs. D.’s class. I went home.
I checked the number of seasons for “The Good Place.” I had just seen the final episode for Season 1. There were two more seasons to go, and it sounds complicated. I wasn’t up for the ethical struggles of these folks. I switched to an Australian detective series. The ones I found were too intense. I may watch reruns of Miss Marple.
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