I'm so glad!!

A company in Maine that has made rapid flu tests for years is switching to rapid coronavirus tests, starts mass producing them this week. $40 a test, just like the flu test: https://www.centralmaine.com/2020/03/30/coronavirus-tests-produced-in-maine-give-results-within-minutes/

Me too! She can go out on her balcony, and also has a community garden plot. She can still hang with a friend sitting in their respective garden plots.

That's a great idea 🙂 She loves sending cards.

I know... it was one of those times when the words came out of my mouth and I KNEW it was exactly the wrong thing to say. I still remember saying something mean when I was a teenager. It pops into my head every so often and I really hope she's forgotten it! She's already on a med, so I think we're ok there. She's got her laptop, and loves YouTube and Amazon Prime. She won't videochat with me yet, but I'm working on it.

My mom is in her mid-60's, and lives alone. Usually she loves living alone, but it's starting to get to her. She normally has a bit of health anxiety and she's struggling. I recently got on her case for running an non-essential errand and she cried 😞 She did so well, too, wearing gloves and a mask, but I still jumped all over her because I'm so worried that she'll catch this virus. I was too hard on her though 😞 I'm putting together an Amazon order for her, and so far I've got a NYT crossword book, that map-drawing book someone posted in a different thread, and a puzzle. She normally enjoys drawing/art, sewing, cooking, gardening. She is very talented at all of those. Map drawing book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1452169918/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1 Any ideas welcome! I'll probably send something to her every two weeks or so.

Hi guys! Sorry I'm late to the party but thanks for the invite! I agree with everyone here that suggested just focusing on that phonological awareness. And if mom isn't so good at it, no problem, that can be something to work on! You can always get better at it, even as an adult. I find your description of knowing the entire word vs. parts really fascinating 🙂 On that previous thread that PeterPan shared, I talked about how to work towards the goal of doing everything out loud - but like Cake and Pi said, she is able to do it if the word is written down, but not out loud (yet!). So you start to do things written down - like writing the word 'flap', then taking out the /f/ sound (cross it out), leaving "lap." Etc. Then when that's easy, represent each sound (4 sounds, f/l/a/p/) with coins or buttons or whatnot, and take off the button that represents the /f/ sound. Then tap out the remaining sounds, l/a/p/. After that, try it out loud. Boom! Mastered that level. Moving on. I would buy David Kilpatrick's book "Equipped for Reading Success." It's my reading Bible. I LOVE it so much. The first many pages are informational, and then the last 50 pages or so are his phonemic awareness program. It starts with syllables and moves ever so slowly down to the nitty gritty of phonemic awareness. My kids, even those who struggle with sounds, love it. I think they love it because it starts them where the work is really easy, and then slooooowly moves them along. If they need it, we use letters, then objects, then just sounds. It's so gradual that it's not stressful. I'm so interested to hear how it goes with a probably dyslexic adult. 🙂 I'm not so great on the other language stuff, so I won't chime in on that. A really big bonus of the phonological awareness work is that it helps so many other things, just by the nature of it... focus, patience, perseverance, etc.

Me too. Now people are mad because she didn't order a stay at home order, which I totally understand and feel the same about, but I'm glad she at least did what she did, in such a calm, informative way.

In my neighborhood, I've seen one kid riding his bike around alone, and another family with some teenagers playing basketball, but nobody's mingling. I've been going for walks, and once came near someone so I crossed the street. She gave me the thumbs up and said, "Good distancing!"

Maine's governor, Janet Mills, is awesome. She just held a press conference saying that all non-essential businesses must close. She was very no-nonsense, practical, and strong. She was specific, too - Don't bring your whole family grocery shopping, make a list and send one person to shop as quickly as possible. Just because a business is open, doesn't mean it's safe to shop there. Even though we usually go to a bingo game or Elks Club, or play pick up basketball, we can't do those things - for now. She definitely made it clear that we're all doing this for the vulnerable in our communities. She also said that we may need to consider more restrictive options, and that it depends on if we "choose to stay apart for now, so we can come back together later." Very proud to be a Mainah 👍

Thank you!! I'm off to research!!!

As a word of encouragement, I teach a student with multiple challenges who wasn't reading much until this year, and hadn't made too much progress for the past couple years. I am ashamed to say that I had almost given up that this student's reading would improve, but seemingly all of a sudden, all the practice we had been doing came together. When that moment happened, I was able to give a lot more difficult instruction in a shorter period of time, perhaps because the foundation of the 'reading house' had finally been completed. I don't know, but it was a huge wake up call to me that I should never underestimate a child. I like to pride myself on seeing the potential in every student, but I think I had unintentionally pegged this kid as someone who wouldn't really read well. Interestingly, the boost in reading has coincided with a boost in language skills and comprehension. It's been pretty great to witness.

How old is your DD? I'm not an expert in language delays, so feel free to take my ideas with a grain of salt. First, phonemic awareness - are you sure it's good enough? I would do Kilpatrick's PAST test and find out. with language delayed kids, however, it's tricky to do this test because understanding what to do can be a little difficult. However, with my language delayed kids, I have found that we can get there with many demonstrations. The PAST test is all done aloud, BUT when you are actually teaching the phonemic awareness skills, you can go from concrete to abstract with each skill. For example, if you're trying to get a kid to "say 'pat' but don't say 'p' - which will be 'at'), you can start concretely by writing the word on a whiteboard and erasing the p. Then you can move to having three stones on the table, pointing to each one and saying p-a-t-, and then taking away the first stone. Re-tap the sounds, but whisper the 'p' sound where the stone is missing, and then say 'a-t' in a normal voice. I think many kids may potentially have okay phonological processing, but not quite good enough without training. Does she know her letter-sound connections really, really quickly? I use a deck of sound cards from the Fundations program, and drill them every.single.day, sometimes twice a day, with my dyslexic kids. https://store.wilsonlanguage.com/fundations-standard-sound-cards-3-second-edition/ We probably have 20 automatic cards in the rotation, a couple that the kids mostly know but sometimes mess up, and then one or two new ones. Memory challenges can impact how fast letter-sound connections become automatic... all the more reason to practice them every day. When she decodes, does she do one sound at a time and then blend them together, or does she read certain words automatically? Without really good phonemic awareness and letter-sound automaticity, she will blend slowly. As far as remember rules like y making the ee sound at the end of a word like happy, it's going to require lots and lots and lots of practice. Working memory comes into play here, because the student is having to remember many things at the same time. You really can't rush a kid faster than what they're ready to do. Advanced phonemic awareness, automaticity with all the letter sounds/combinations, and steady practice with a structured program are all necessary. It can be frustratingly slow, but the alternative is pushing too hard and making the kid anxious and upset. I really like the High Noon books for reading practice. Every day my reading students do 5 minutes of phonemic awareness practice, 5 minutes of letter-sound cards, 10-15 minutes of spelling/reading single words (including new concepts and reviewing older concepts), and then some reading of connected text. Sorry this got long. It's such a relief to think of something other than the news!!

Yes - luckily we're both working from home and we're well stocked up 🙂

Could be. He's been coughing for ten days at least. He had asthma as a kid, so it seems like sometimes he gets a worse/more violent cough than other people do. Here I am feeling fine! Weird. The headache could be allergies... we've got some mildew brewing in the bathroom (yuck!!).

DH and I both have colds, I think. He's been sick for two weeks now - started with sore throat, moved to coughing. No temp. The weird thing is he never had any runny nose, which makes me wonder. Headaches off and on for two weeks. I'm about a week behind him, sore throat that's now gone, headaches almost every day, slight cough, but my nose IS runny, so I *think* we just have colds. Just staying home except for rare grocery runs, and I wear gloves and a mask. The headache might be because I'm staring at a computer screen all day though...

So, speaking of stages and changes, what stage are you at now? Personally? Pretty accepting, since I'm teaching from home. Still feel like I'm in a bad dream though. Other close family? My mom is similar to me. Emotionally? Sad, bored, frustrated, concerned about world health + economies. Lonely. Intellectually? Same. Level of social distancing? Not seeing friends, talking to neighbors from the edges of our lawns. Level of “lockdown” or still going out and about? I wouldn't say I'm on lockdown - not confined to the house. I go for walks, drives. I went to Walmart the other day wearing gloves and a mask. Still go to the grocery store when I need to (every couple days/week).

I decided that since I'm going to be stuck in the house for a long time, I'm finally going to buy a digital piano. I've been putting it off because I want a "real" piano, but I finally accepted that since our house is tiny, a real piano would be pretty loud in this space, and when DH is home, he's not going to want to listen to the same pieces over and over and over again. With digital, I can turn it down or use headphones. Actually, DH probably wouldn't say anything but it would bother me. I'm looking for something good enough for an intermediate player, less than $1,000. Thanks for any advice!

Maine teachers just got an update from the Maine DOE saying that the CDC is now recommending 8-20 weeks of school closure. I couldn't find the same thing on the CDC's page, but I wouldn't be surprised. Teaching from home... stinks! It's a ton of work and also really boring at the same time. So much staring at screens. I didn't realize how much I depended on "getting out" at least once a day when I'm home... I usually just go to a shop or run an errand on a weekend day, even if I don't have to, just to GET OUT! *Sniff*

My school has now closed. Teachers getting together tomorrow to finalize plans for remote learning. Kids can pick up computers, chargers, books, etc. I'm sad! It feels like we're living in a sci fi movie, except it's real 😞

Our school is meeting to discuss how to do virtual instruction if we have to close. We're also going to do video chat to check in with students (mostly just to make sure they're doing ok, not for educational purposes). For kids that need lunch and breakfast, the school busses will deliver once a day and drop food off in driveways. I can't imagine that too much actual learning is going to happen if we close... and I worry about many kids being left home alone all day, every day for weeks :(

These are fun 🙂 I've found a couple books like that as PDFs: Easier: https://www.mathriddlebook.com/full-math-riddle-book.pdf Harder: https://1.cdn.edl.io/ethAPbhrCatipKJsu0L1NJ53cisMGIG2rn1y7G6NmBprNTyL.pdf Scholastic has various math riddle books, too. Some of my kids enjoy coloring pages where you have to solve math problems to find the right color: https://www.coloringsquared.com/free-coloring-pages-math-for-kids/

Nope! I decided that it doesn't exist. Right now I'm using NumberWorlds (the "remedial" version of EverydayMath) online as a guide, and maybe use a third of the worksheets for each unit, and use other things for the rest. In my ideal world, I would have a website that had a list of skills for each grade (perhaps linked to common core standards), and I would be able to check a box next to each skill, and choose how many of each problem I want, and boom, a worksheet is created. That way, I could continue to add in review questions with the current ones to keep skills fresh. I kind of do that by hand now, but it would be a lot easier to click a couple times and create the worksheet. Worksheet creators already exist online, but mostly they are limited to one skill at a time. I want something more like, one addition problem with regrouping, one subtraction without regrouping, a 1 x 2 multiplication, single-digit division, and a word problem. I'd pay a subscription for something like that!

I love Teach Your Monster to Read! I didn't know they have an app. The regular computer version (web based) is always free. I'm not sure how great it is for kids with dyslexia, but it's a great balance of reading and games, it's fun for kids, and they do practice! So I recommend it 🙂 My students and I all love the British accent 🙂

I use a fitted sheet and no top sheet, because DH wraps up like a burrito and the sheet always ends up coiling around him or stuffed at the bottom of the bed. It makes me crazy. So now we use a thin blanket as the bottom layer, and somehow it doesn't get coiled up like the sheet, and I just wash the blanket when I wash the fitted sheet.