Hee hee! I'd love to see a sign that says that.

Oh, the OT does check! And every eval I've read says, all the kids have 'em. Not sure what the OT does to address it, though. I'll have to ask.

I agree, and honestly I'm shocked that the kids I've worked with really catch on to it so fast! I thought it would take months for a kid to learn all the different names, brother pairs, etc., but nope. A couple of weeks, max, and they're suddenly experts.

Haha... I'm already considered a bit "out there"... maybe I'll try this NEXT year 😂

Hope you start perking up soon. This mystery illness sounds miserable!

Alrighty, back from the vet. Maggie's got a little blood in her urine, but not enough to be seriously alarming. No elevated white cell count, and a quick ultrasound didn't show any problems with her bladder. The vet says it could be a UTI, so we're doing a culture, but thinks it's more likely that it's something called idiopathic feline something...? basically just inflammation for no known cause. She said cats are very susceptible to stress, and my husband's been away for a few days, so maybe that's it? Maggie's got a few days of antibiotics while we wait for the culture results. If blood happens again, we can do an x-ray and more testing next week. Said she's looking pretty good for 14 years old 😊 Now off to watch her like a hawk...

"Structured literacy," or whatever it's being called now, it's taking off in Arkansas. I love this story! The state-wide changes happened ONLY because parents did the work. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/what-parents-of-dyslexic-children-are-teaching-schools-about-literacy

Yes, this definitely plays a HUGE part! Interesting about interception... he definitely likes to chew his sweatshirt strings, etc. I'm hoping to arrange something for the summer 🙂

This is a good idea. I'm just waiting for the office to open in 2 minutes so I can call 🙂 She's been running around playing, and peeing fine (as far as I can tell... but it's just a guess!), so I'm wondering if she passed a crystal or something? Ouch. I definitely want her to have pain meds if she needs them. I actually just got her some plain turkey baby food, since that's what she'll always eat when she's not feeling well. I never thought to water it down, though - I'll do that right now. Thank you!

Thanks guys. I guess I should use a personal day tomorrow. I feel bad because I already had a sub on Wednesday 😞

Oh yeah, we used the mirror for months. He actually got crazy good at the short vowels and a couple others (ee/ea, oo). He would always feel the sounds in his mouth when spelling and reading. But after all the breaks and stuff, it's leaked out a bit. Ugh.

Depends on the sound... if I cue him by showing him how my mouth looks, he gets it. Some days he's solid, others, not.

Thanks for the support. She just peed, and I didn't see anything amiss. She also ate a bunch of food. On the (fingers crossed) chance that I don't notice anything further, should I still take her in tomorrow?

I haven't, but I'd like to. We did LiPS intensively for about 5 months, but it's obvious that we need to review and keep on practicing. Everything was SO solid around winter break, but after that there were field trips and special programs and spring break and all the things that disrupt schedules.

I'm worried that my sweet Maggie is sick. I found a few drops of what looked like a drop of pasta sauce that fell on the floor, next to her food dish when I got home today. Then, I saw some streaks of blood on her blanket on the couch, and on further investigation, saw some watery blood-is looking spots on the edge of her litter box. On one clump of urine, a single dark spot of blood. I don't think it's a cut on her paw. Ahh! All the vets are closed, except for the emergency vet. I'm not sure this is an emergency, anyway - she's drinking water just fine. I put a white sheet under the litter box to catch any drops, and put light colored sheets on the couches to cover my bases. I can call in sick to work if necessary tomorrow, and get an appointment for the morning. Do you think I can watch and wait overnight? She's purring, cuddling, doing all the normal cat things. 😞

I always thought the larger version of an item was cheaper per ounce, but I was buying Goldfish crackers the other day, and the smaller bag was actually a better price per ounce. Nice try, Pepperidge Farm!

I was watching an interesting YouTube presentation on The Reading League's channel. I'm not sure which one it was... anyway, they explained that speed (automaticity) with letter/sound connections greatly impacts word reading. Even when proficient adult readers read a word, they still register every sound, just in a tiny fraction of a second. So let's say a kid is retrieving the first letter sound slowly, then doing the same for each following letter (k-o-m), by the time they read the end the word, their working memory may have let go of the first sounds, or of the order of the sounds. That's why dyslexic kids will often seem to make careless errors in reading by "starting" with the last letter, when in fact they did start sounding out a word with the first letter, but their brains garbled it for them. I would recommend lots and lots of practice with sound flashcards, like before every single reading session. It's definitely a frustrating problem. One of my students has been doing short vowels ALL year. He still mixes them up. It's really getting both of us down!!

It's pretty cheap... I'd go for it so you don't have to worry 🙂

I'm very sorry. I felt the same way about our dog. ❤️

I'm using The Writing Revolution with my students, and it's really helping. The first lesson is about fragments - you start off with giving them a partial sentence (orally), like "Before school." The student has to turn that into a complete sentence. There aren't any worksheets, etc. in this book, so it does take effort on the teacher's part, but so far my students are fascinated! I was trying to get them to understand the concept of a paragraph, and it was a huge disaster, so we backed down to sentences and it's been just the right fit. You can get the printed book, or check out this PDF (not the latest version): http://tapconyc.weebly.com/uploads/1/9/1/5/191529/the_hochman_method_09-15-2016-062048.pdf I find the checklists REALLY helpful! p.s. I didn't scan the document, someone else did 🙂

Yes, because Wilson (and Spell links, I assume) don't focus on phonemic awareness. You can do them both at the same time, but they're different. LiPS is meant to last for a period of weeks to months, not forever. If you're considering a career in this area, it would be a worthwhile investment. Of course, if it would throw the family budget under the bus, that's a different consideration.

Agreed. And LiPS can be used for much more than sound discrimination - spelling, reading, it's all in there. The lessons work on all of those at the same time. The beginning part of the program uses pictures of mouths, and you practice spelling/reading/making changes to words with those, and then you move to using letter tiles, but using the same terminology from earlier. When I do LiPS, even once we switch to letter tiles, I still bring out the mouth pictures frequently.

And this one comes in solid black or solid turquoise: https://www.llbean.com/llb/shop/58704?page=beansport-swimwear-tankini-top-scoopneck&bc=12-27-624-517610-503320&feat=503320-GN3&csp=f

This one looks good to me: https://www.llbean.com/llb/shop/122055?page=beansport-swimwear-tankini-top-scoopneck-painted-wave-print&bc=12-27-624-517610-503320&feat=503320-GN3&csp=f&attrValue_0=Cobalt

LiPS teaches phonemic awareness, the awareness of the sounds within words. It helps with similar sounding sounds (b/p, t/d, f,v, etc) and vowels, among other things. The teacher manual for LiPS is excellent. Seeing Stars teaches kids to visualize the letters in their minds, and to make changes - for example, "visualize" the word "cat," then change the t to a p, and what letters do you "see?" C-A-P, cap. You also ask questions like, "What's the third letter you see? The middle letter? Now say them backwards. Now, forwards again." You're teaching kids to hold the visual representation of the letters in their minds, like on an invisible whiteboard. I'm more of a LiPS fan, but I like both.