So cute..on what other thread is there a couple of eraser experts. I am enjoying learning about something I never thought about before the artists came to the fore.
CHIT CHAT in VOLTVILLE
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I got back from tutoring a while ago, cooked and ate dinner, and now, here I am with my latest tutoring report.
First, the little girl. We went over her vocab words from last time. I asked her to make up a sentence for each one, just spoken, not written, because that takes less time. I'll have them write sentences again, but that's a lot more difficult. And then I have to correct grammar and spelling. Well, with the spoken sentences, I still correct grammar. Anyway, this reveals words that the kids don't really know the meaning of, even if they can read and pronounce them, and often, that evolves into a long explanation and discussion. But that's good, too. Then the girl chose between 2 Little Golden Books I have, Little Red Riding Hood or Hansel and Gretel. She chose H&G. She said, "I know this one!" so my guess is they read it in class or maybe I presented the book sometime before and read it to her. Anyway, I was impressed by how well she read. She has come so far! At one point, she wanted me to read it, but soon she took over again. She's a real trooper! At the end, I told her how well she's reading now. I said -- and it's true -- that she's reading about as well as her brother did when I first started tutoring him in Sept. She hunched up and hid her face. I guess such praise embarrassed her. But I think she liked being praised, too. Now I have a whole list of the words she didn't know when she read that book. I get vocab words faster than I can assign them to learn, and I skip the really complicated ones, too. I decided not to include "forest," for instance. But she knew woodcutter. It's amazing how she knows complicated words but not simple ones like "so."
After I finished with her, they clamored for a Mad Libs, and I obliged. This one, too, had adverbs, which are harder than adjectives, nouns, and verbs, and the girl got to think up some. To make it simple, I said to think of words that described a verb and ended in "ly," like "quickly." But she couldn't use that word, since I had given it as an example. Both she and her brother tried to think of "ly" words, and her brother came up with "playly," which I said is not a word, but "playfully" is, and we used that. I can't say how wonderful Mad Libs are for teaching these things in a very fun manner. It's the one game they still don't tire of playing. If you ever have to teach a kid the parts of speech, I highly recommend this method. It may take a while, but sooner or later, they will know the parts of speech. There are lots of Mad Libs on the Internet. Maybe not the most inspired ones, but the kids love them, even the duds. You never know how they'll turn out, which is part of the fun, I think. Maybe if they were all the same amount of hilariousness, they wouldn't be so special.
So then it was the boy's turn. The girl stayed to watch, but she was pestering her brother till I sent her away. It's a privilege to monitor the other kid's lesson. You have to behave, stay quiet unless your help is requested, and not distract the kid doing the lesson. Any infraction of those rules, and you are sent off to play. I think it's good for the kids to sit in on each other's lessons, but not to the point of disrupting them. So I make it a privilege, not a duty, and I think that makes the kids more interested (and, more important, more well-behaved) when they do sit in.
We went over the words from last time, which were words he hadn't studied from the time before, when he read the book on astronauts in a space station. He knew how to read most of the words, and had the most trouble pronouncing "basin," which we both wondered how it got into the astronaut book. Neither of us could remember its context. I described a wash basin, like in old times before running water, and also a land feature that resembled it, being a sunken place in the ground that looked like a basin. And I had to correct him several times to use a long a, not a short a when pronouncing it.
Then he read from a book he had about Abe Lincoln. He asked me about why, if his name was Abraham, the book called him Abe, and I explained about nicknames, which I had explained before. This is a hard concept for the boy to grasp. Both kids, actually. I mentioned a few names and their nicknames for the boy to get the idea, like William being Bill, Joseph being Joe, etc.
Then we read the story. Even not knowing all the words, the boy did great! I praised him, too, telling him how well he's reading now and how I remember when he read like his sister is doing now.
As I was leaving and the boy was seeing me to the door, I told him what a joy it is to teach kids who are smart and eager to learn, not lazy and stupid, how much satisfaction they gave me by being good students.
First, the little girl. We went over her vocab words from last time. I asked her to make up a sentence for each one, just spoken, not written, because that takes less time. I'll have them write sentences again, but that's a lot more difficult. And then I have to correct grammar and spelling. Well, with the spoken sentences, I still correct grammar. Anyway, this reveals words that the kids don't really know the meaning of, even if they can read and pronounce them, and often, that evolves into a long explanation and discussion. But that's good, too. Then the girl chose between 2 Little Golden Books I have, Little Red Riding Hood or Hansel and Gretel. She chose H&G. She said, "I know this one!" so my guess is they read it in class or maybe I presented the book sometime before and read it to her. Anyway, I was impressed by how well she read. She has come so far! At one point, she wanted me to read it, but soon she took over again. She's a real trooper! At the end, I told her how well she's reading now. I said -- and it's true -- that she's reading about as well as her brother did when I first started tutoring him in Sept. She hunched up and hid her face. I guess such praise embarrassed her. But I think she liked being praised, too. Now I have a whole list of the words she didn't know when she read that book. I get vocab words faster than I can assign them to learn, and I skip the really complicated ones, too. I decided not to include "forest," for instance. But she knew woodcutter. It's amazing how she knows complicated words but not simple ones like "so."
After I finished with her, they clamored for a Mad Libs, and I obliged. This one, too, had adverbs, which are harder than adjectives, nouns, and verbs, and the girl got to think up some. To make it simple, I said to think of words that described a verb and ended in "ly," like "quickly." But she couldn't use that word, since I had given it as an example. Both she and her brother tried to think of "ly" words, and her brother came up with "playly," which I said is not a word, but "playfully" is, and we used that. I can't say how wonderful Mad Libs are for teaching these things in a very fun manner. It's the one game they still don't tire of playing. If you ever have to teach a kid the parts of speech, I highly recommend this method. It may take a while, but sooner or later, they will know the parts of speech. There are lots of Mad Libs on the Internet. Maybe not the most inspired ones, but the kids love them, even the duds. You never know how they'll turn out, which is part of the fun, I think. Maybe if they were all the same amount of hilariousness, they wouldn't be so special.
So then it was the boy's turn. The girl stayed to watch, but she was pestering her brother till I sent her away. It's a privilege to monitor the other kid's lesson. You have to behave, stay quiet unless your help is requested, and not distract the kid doing the lesson. Any infraction of those rules, and you are sent off to play. I think it's good for the kids to sit in on each other's lessons, but not to the point of disrupting them. So I make it a privilege, not a duty, and I think that makes the kids more interested (and, more important, more well-behaved) when they do sit in.
We went over the words from last time, which were words he hadn't studied from the time before, when he read the book on astronauts in a space station. He knew how to read most of the words, and had the most trouble pronouncing "basin," which we both wondered how it got into the astronaut book. Neither of us could remember its context. I described a wash basin, like in old times before running water, and also a land feature that resembled it, being a sunken place in the ground that looked like a basin. And I had to correct him several times to use a long a, not a short a when pronouncing it.
Then he read from a book he had about Abe Lincoln. He asked me about why, if his name was Abraham, the book called him Abe, and I explained about nicknames, which I had explained before. This is a hard concept for the boy to grasp. Both kids, actually. I mentioned a few names and their nicknames for the boy to get the idea, like William being Bill, Joseph being Joe, etc.
Then we read the story. Even not knowing all the words, the boy did great! I praised him, too, telling him how well he's reading now and how I remember when he read like his sister is doing now.
As I was leaving and the boy was seeing me to the door, I told him what a joy it is to teach kids who are smart and eager to learn, not lazy and stupid, how much satisfaction they gave me by being good students.
Because the left side is near the curb, while the right side is facing traffic.
Because the left side is near the curb, while the right side is facing traffic.
have you ever ride a horse ?
I'm riding 193 horses nowadays, Lis. My Mustang is a horse.....sort of.
I have petted a horse and I have fed a horse carrots, but I have never ridden one.
I have petted a horse and I have fed a horse carrots, but I have never ridden one.
It's football time !!!!! Guess which team I am rooting for
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Never heard of them, Awsum. Now the Brooklyn Dodgers I have heard of, but they disappeared a long time ago.
That's because soldiers with swords hanging off their left-side belts had to get on that side, so horses got used to it. My horse is trained so you can get on the right side, too, but not all horses are, so everyone just does it on the left. It makes no difference if you're not right-handed and wearing a sword on your left side, but the tradition had carried over. And horses not trained to be mounted on both sides think something's very weird and wrong if you mount on the right side.
Also, since I was trained to get on the left side, I find it more clumsy to get on the right side, so I often mount on the left. But I do try to switch, since I heard that that pulling on one side can put a horse's back out after years of it, and it can skew the saddle, too.
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I was going to venture that many people are right handed. That, being the stronger arm, would be the one of choice to grab a pommel with to lever/pull yourself up into the saddle. The sword thing makes a lot of sense though.
Actually, when you get on the left side of a horse, your left hand grabs the pommel (the front of the saddle).
Good Morning Voltville
With the warm-up, roughly 12" of snow has melted away. There is still snow on the ground and driveway, but hopefully not enough to inhibit deliveries anymore. I'm waiting for some tools from Harbor Freight. The woman loves her tools.
My creek has returned (is no longer frozen bank to bank) and there are mini ice floes - some 5' long, floating down it. The creek is on the rise. It will come up a great deal more, I predict. I like it when it does that. Flooding scours the bottom clean so that the shale shines through and the creek glows blue-green.
It felt wonderful to be able to sleep with the door open during the night again. Makes my squirrelly nervous system feel better. While I've had the sensation of a hoard of large, hyperactive angry beetles crawling all over my scalp recently, that seems to have subsided with the cool air treatment. Thank goodness!! Not my idea of a good time. Just sayin'.
I had the poor judgement to run out of bird seed. Looking at the pics I've posted, y'all can probably guess why I ran out. Most of the freeloaders are unhappy about this state of affairs, but have simply flown away to sulk. One particularly miffed blue jay spotted me yesterday at my desk in the kitchen and flew back and forth in front of the window facing my desk - cawing loudly and vehemently. He's probably the same jay that terrorized me yesterday tapping loudly at one of the picture windows expressing his dissatisfaction. I'll go into town today and get bird chow. Nothing worse than angry villagers.
Gorgeous photo, Sandy!!
BTW - I noticed that you were absent CatLady.
And for any of you that are lurking, feel free to ignore Jerry's directive and lurk all you like. I do so myself sometimes - especially during flurries of activity. Personally, I really only like to be here and post when it's peaceful rather than manic.
There's a bluebird perched outside my window. I'll take that as an omen of a good day ahead of me, and hopefully, the rest of you as well.
Rave, you have such a fantastic variety of birds there in your kingdom! I've been meaning to ask--is this just typical for your region? I've lived in FL most of my life, and almost never see colorful birds, except for cardinals (and the pileated woodpecker that digs the carpenter bee larvae out of my deck railings).
Hello volties! Happy new year! Just bolted in to let you see some pictures of my new puppy - Piccolo. She is settling in fine and has gained a pound since she has been with me.
What a cutie! She's so alert. I can tell she's ready for action; just you give the go-ahead, and she'll go.
It's been slow all day. I guess everyone's out enjoying the milder weather. I went grocery shopping today, which isn't terribly exciting, but at least the roads were clear.
So here's another winter scene to say good night.
So here's another winter scene to say good night.
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