What's the Letter of the Day????
When I arrived home after the parade and turned into the driveway, three little neighbor girls from three different houses came running up to my car. "Debwa, Debrah, Deborah! What's the letter of the day?!?!?"
I got out of my car and said, "What would you like it to be?" The letter of the day on Saturday was "S". Saturday was the first letter-of-the-day day.
I like shows like Sesame Street that get kids thinking about phonics and letters and sounds. So, when a six-year-old neighbor trailed along while I walked my dogs Saturday afternoon, I started talking with her about the sounds of letters. It all started with the "S" on the stop sign. She didn't know what S-T-O-P spelled. She didn't know what a red octagonal sign with the word STOP was . So, I talked about stop signs and we sounded out the letters and put them together into the word STOP. After that, we thought of words that had an "S" in them and said them aloud.
For today's "Letter of the Day", they chose the letter T. They thought of words with a "T" sound in them and they looked for "T"s on nearby cars, on a drink bottle, on an egg carton, and in an old newspaper. They thought of all the words they could think of that included the letter "T" and then one said, "Can we have TWO letters-of-the-day today?" I said, "Sure! What other letter would you like?" She chose the letter "H".
After that, they asked to play in my front yard and asked if they could write on my sidewalk in chalk. I said okay. A little later, I came out to find "I love you"s written on every square. That was nice. To me, it means that they feel valued and respected by me, maybe even cared for. I never allow them into my house or my back yard, but when they come over and ring my doorbell and ask me to read to them or to bring my dogs out, I'll usually go out with books or dogs, or both, and sit with them in my front yard.
When I took the dogs and books out today, there were about five kids in the front yard. They played with the dogs and helped me pick up trash. (People throw trash into my fenced in front yard. I don't know why. Chicken bones, cigarette butts, empty drink bottles and cups and fast food containers. My guess is it comes from the house next door where the driveway is also full of similar garbage. I don't like it, but there's not much to be done, since it happens when I'm not looking and people would surely not admit to doing such a thing.)
The camera is broken :(, so I couldn't take any digital photos of the words on the sidewalk, but I found a throwaway camera in the house and took a photo of each of the kids with their messages. After that, they selected a Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle story from one of my books, and I read it to them. Before the story, one of the two went home. Three remained. Two started listening to the story, then one went to play with the other. By the end of the story, only one was listening. That one left, and I was back to my own events.
Back inside, I repaired my kitchen faucet! It's been without water for what seems like ages, but I wasn't ready to pay someone to come fix it. Yesterday, when I went to have my car worked on, my mechanic's plumber-friend was there. I described the "no water in the kitchen sink" problem, and he told me what to do. It was SO easy! Yippee! No more washing the dishes in a dishpan with water from the bathtub!
This past week was the first week of 2nd semester. I think it will be okay this round, because my work schedule has changed, and I might actually have time to do my school work in a timely fashion. Now it's up to me to stay focused and do what needs to be done each week! There is a lot to do and a lot to learn this semester! I wonder if I can come up with enthusiasm like those kids had today. That would be neat. It might be a little odd, but neat. "Teacher! Teacher! What's the assignment of the day???" Of course, I already know the answer to that one. "It's in the syllabus." Oh yeah, right. Off to the books! :)
posted by jordanrep.com/10522 @ 2:44 PM
1 Comments:
Very, very nice. The kind of entry I reread.
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