Tuesday, March 18, 2025

 Tuesday, March 18, 2025

     I slept straight through from 10 pm to 6 am. I never got up in the middle of the night. Wow! Looking out, I saw wet ground. It had rained. Yay!  We can always use rain. Our sun is intense, even in the middle of winter.  Moisture can be sucked up quickly, leaving only what humidity provides.  We have that. It’s enough to corrode metal but not enough to leave us feeling like we’re living in a sauna. Washington, D.C., has that honor.

   I didn’t have to water today. It was still raining when I took a short walk with Elsa. Neither of us was interested in getting wet.  I hoped Elsa wouldn’t use my lanai to relieve herself. 

    I had a noon appointment with Tomi, the cranial sacral practitioner.  She does amazing work. Darby has been telling me about her for quite some time. I’m glad I finally took the plunge.

    After I finished that appointment, I stopped by the accountant’s office to pick up my completed tax return and pay her. 

  I worked with the Twins this morning. They both chose to work on composing a story rather than work on comprehension or the dictation/spelling exercise. Twin A had started a story in our last session.  She gave incomplete information for the most basic question. I used the information I pulled out of her in the previous session and organized it into a coherent whole.  I had a sensible picture of the circumstances she described.  By contrast, I pulled information from Twin E with ease.  It was about an excursion to Coconut Beach with their dad. It’s Twin E’s favorite beach because there’s a two-tiered tower they can jump off.  Mama K doesn’t go with them because watching the kids jump off the tower scares her.

   I usually meet with Fifth-grade GV and fourth-grade LG on Mondays. LG is off to California for the week, and GV had something come up again.  I was glad to hear he was off with friends. I’ve been concerned. It sounded like he didn’t have any friends his age.  He says he prefers adults. I spoke briefly to GV’s mom. I told her he reported enjoying writing now. She said we still can’t understand what he writes. Was it the composition or the spelling? The spelling.  It occurred to me that when he works with me on spelling, that’s our focus. We don’t focus on composition. I dictate phrases, clauses, or sentences.  He has to remember what I say and work on the spelling. When I work on composition with him, I type what he dictates. When he writes on his own, he has to focus on composition, recall the phrases, clauses, and sentences he composed,  figure out the spelling, and write the words.  It is the most neurologically complex school task. If his mom gets to see what he wrote, she should send them to me.  I will use his writing to teach him editing.  Once he has the composition, he can correct his spelling and awkward sentences.