Saturday, March 11, 2023

 Saturday, March 11, 2023

Mama K’s crew is scheduled for Saturday morning and Wednesday afternoon after school. I sent the Zoom link and texted Mama K I was ready. She called to tell me she wasn’t home and couldn’t reach anyone in the house to help the kids sign on. I texted her eighteen-year-old son and fourteen-year-old daughter, telling them to contact me when they were up. I figured teenagers would be asleep on a weekend morning.  

  Eighteen-year-old E contacted me when he got up. He set up Twin A. I had prepared passages on pre-primer through the second-grade levels from the Jerry Johns testing material. A moved through the passages up to the first grade with ease. I had a few more first-grade passages for her to read for today. Her reading isn’t completely fluid; there are stops and repeats as she figures things out. However, she reads the words accurately, and her literal comprehension is good. She can recall the passage after one labored reading. She is doing very well. I will have her in second-grade material in our next session.

   She got off to get “the next victim,”- my expression. The Zoom meeting shut off. I called eighteen-year-old E for help. He got back to me to say everyone was asleep. I know these kids get up very early and then fall back to sleep. I can identify; I do the same thing. I texted E to say I was looking for fourth-grade K, too. He didn’t know that. He thought I was just working with the twins.

 I worked on comprehension with fourth-grade K.  He has a big problem; he doesn’t know when to rely on the information in the story when to make an inference, and when to use his background knowledge. He is so confused. I can’t figure out why he has this problem.

     I got a few chores done around the house. I cleaned the stovetop until it shone. I have a great system. My stove top is black enamel, which is easy to clean. The raw aluminum ones are a pain. The stove top is designed so I can pour water around the burners without having it run off. I add Dawn dish detergent to it and let it sit. If I add too much soap, getting that all sopped up is a job. Either way, all the grease is soaked up. The black enamel shines.

  I also did some gardening. I trimmed the hedges along the driveway more and closely cropped my crepe, following Margo’s instructions. We’ll see.

 As usual, I struggled to get up to date on my updates. I have mixed feelings about maintaining them. I resent them as a burden. My life would probably be empty and unbearable without them. I enjoy writing; putting thoughts into words is a challenge. If my educational work took off and I was in demand, I would be okay without them. I don’t know. Before I met Mike, I kept a journal; I stopped it when we got together. I never wrote journal entries the whole time. Nay, that’s not true. I recorded my thoughts every once in a while, but it wasn’t a need. I started these updates while he was in the hospital and haven’t stopped since.  

  I completed 11,000 steps today. Ten thousand steps are only four miles. I want to up the ante.