Wednesday, October 20, 2021

 Wednesday, October 20, 2021

 

   Another wonderful night's sleep.  I woke up around 4am. Again, I didn't want to get up that early. I tried meditating while lying down.  It is doable, but it isn't the best. I got up the moment the alarm went off at 5:30.  

   I continued working on what I needed to do so to collate the video slides.  I have made ten videos, each with snippets of the final video.  I have gone through to select the best of the now available recordings.  This was a lot of hard work.  Sunday and Monday, I watched the various versions of specific sections of the video to see which one I liked the best. Then yesterday and today, I used the list I complied, went through each video to mark the starting point for each section.

   I went for my short walks to take breaks.  I modified the toe sling.  I played with the second toe on my right foot to see what I had to do to prevent it from curling over the first toe.  I thought I had to place the sling around the top section of the toe to best prevent it from its migration. Then I pushed down on the section of the toe closest to the foot.  That made all the difference.  I had been shoving the spongy toe separator into the side of the sling to increase the distance between the two toes. Now, I thought I would be better off placing that spongy thing into the sling on the top of the toe.  That way, the shoe would press down on the spongy thing pressing the toe down. It's been working pretty well. 

    My blog counts have dropped precipitously.  From a high of 200+, they fell to the single digits overnight. So far, they have still stayed above five.  I would love to know what is happening. I can understand the low count; I want to know the cause for the high count.

       I had Mama K's crew in the afternoon. Before we met, I called her expressing concern about Twin E.  She had been the one who was doing better than Twin A. Now, she was falling behind. Was there a problem at school? Was her teacher making her feel bad about her poor reading? Was someone bullying her at school because of her reading problems?  She was just calling out the first word that came to her mind, regardless of the letters on the page.  Sometimes, the first sound of the word she called out might be the same as the first sound of the word written on the page, but not necessarily.  When we worked today, I got a different impression. She was saying the first word that came to her mind because she wanted to be a good reader, and that is what she saw good readers doing; Words just magically came to their minds. She was one of the students who thought she must have been absent the day the magic was passed. Yes, the way words pop into the minds of good readers does seem like magic to children who can't do it.  When you think about it, it is magic, totally.

    Twin A was off to a doctor's appointment with mom.  I didn't work with her today. Her mom said she read a book. Mom watched her use my crossbody blending technique to figure out the word. You go, girl.

     Then I had K. The primary paper his teacher had sent home was there for him.  I had him work without a model.  He made a mistake saying the sentence, "The quick lazy fox jumps . . ." He stopped and corrected himself. Then he wrote the sentence and his first and last name without a model before him. I used to take him ten to fifteen minutes to write these words. Today it took under three minutes.  I couldn't believe it. He said he is using the primary paper in class. The difference was amazing.  I asked him if he took spelling tests every week. He said no. Hmmm! I wonder. I wrote his teacher to ask her.

  I had Dash later in the day.  He is doing so much better.  The turnaround was when he got his left hemisphere auditory processing center to function and listened to the audiofile.  He still had trouble remembering that the final y in a longer word was likely a long e.  I also repeatedly reminded him that the syllable structure dictated a short vowel sound, VC, a vowel followed by a consonant sound.  

  I asked him how his reading went today in school. For the first time, he remembered reading there.  I told him his teacher was going to expect him to do more work. He said he knew. Did she tell him? No, he could tell. Was he able to do that work? Yes.  Was he surprised? Yes. Yay!!!!