Thursday, March 16, 2023

 Thursday, March 16, 2023

 I got up with the alarm clock this morning shortly after 5:30, even though I planned to get up at 6. It was six when Elsa and I were on the road for our morning walk. My legs did well. I had no pain. There's a good chance the pain I felt at the top of the right leg was due to muscle development instead of arthritis because it's gone. Whenever Elsa stopped to sniff, I did the side-stepping exercise Katie wanted. Now that I understand its purpose, I'm doing much better. I'm strengthening the standing leg instead of stretching the inner thigh muscles. 

   As Nehiwa bends into Kukuna, the uphill section is particularly steep, with over 30% incline. I practice walking backward there, something also recommended by Katie to strengthen a different set of muscles. 

   Elsa and I made it past the second fire hydrant on Kukuna and then headed back down the hill and home. Scott was closing the gate as I arrived. Casey, Scott, and Yvette were all on their mats already. Was I that late? I had five minutes to feed Elsa and prepare for the morning's driveway yoga. Yvette announced that she would be ducking out halfway through the class. Because of the time change, she had her online yoga class with the Montessori school in Connecticut earlier. Scott would take over the second half of the class. Scott does a good job, except he is a little too rushed. He'll do it every Thursday until the fall when the time changes again on the mainland, and Yvette can take over again. I am so delighted to be living somewhere without the time change. I had a car accident every spring.

   I couldn't meet with Mama K's crew yesterday because they were surfing at the beach all day till it was time to go home for dinner. I proposed meeting with them on Thursday morning. Mama K had to take her older daughter and Twin E to the doctor in the morning. She proposed I meet with Twin A at 8:30 and fourth grade K. When I was through with them, Twin E would be home, and I could hook up with her.

  Twin A is knocking my socks off. Her oral reading is at a high first-grade level, and her comprehension is good, too. In our next session, I will try her on second-grade material, which is very exciting. I should get her up to a third-grade level over the summer. She will be going into fourth grade next fall.

  Twin A tried to get fourth-grade K to the session after she was through. I heard her call him, and then nothing. I've been here before. Someone yells for the next sibling but doesn't follow through. Twin A returned to the meeting and told me K was asleep. It's impossible to wake him up. Mama K has told me the kids get up very early. Then, they need a mid-morning nap. I sympathize.

  When Mama K got home with her girls from their doctor visits, she texted me to say Twin E was available. I worked with Twin A on high first-grade reading material and Twin E on pre-primer material. She still has problems using automatic recall. Even when she has seen a word before in the passage, she approaches it as something unfamiliar. There is no use of previous knowledge. I occasionally push recall again. She has to give her mind the letters and then wait to see if her mind gives her the word. With unfamiliar words, she has to identify and recall familiar letter patterns called word families, such as an, in, ip, it, etc. She doesn't do that either, even though she can recognize when I isolate the letter unit. She did a little better today using automatic recall. Then she saw is in a word and found it unfamiliar. I have worked on this with her before. I have to start from scratch.

  I discovered today that she has difficulty identifying the individual sounds in words. I thought we had dealt with that problem. She picked up on it quickly. I suspect she has some concept of what reading should be that is interfering with her learning.

   I got my new teeth today, or at least the trial version. The dentist started doing his own lab work. He got fed up with the work the commercial labs are doing. He put in temporary teeth. His dental assistant, his wife, said he is having fun with his new toys. Usually, I wouldn't get temporaries first. He is being super cautious. I appreciate it and his honesty. He screwed the caps to the posts and filled down the biting sides until they matched my lower teeth. There may be one more edge to take care of. I have an appointment in two weeks for him to check how these teeth are settling in before he makes the permanent teeth.

  I had a make-up appointment with Adolescent D. We worked on Phase II. In this Phase, I dictate the letters, and he writes them. I discovered today that he writes them as I say them. I want to use this as a way to develop his short-term memory. He is supposed to hear them, repeat them, and then write them. It was a grueling session.