Tuesday, October 04, 2005

I'm back from my third (out of four) business trips in so many weeks. I'm pooped! The boys made "welcome home" posters for me -- so cute. R wasn't feeling well today and had a fever -- that poor boy has been getting sick a lot. He still has a bit of a fever now (don't ask me how high it is; I dropped the thermometer in the toilet and threw it away and haven't replaced it yet). His only other symptom is a headache. Bummer.

M is at the Tiger Cubs meeting right now. I was supposed to help him, but I'm home with the kids since R is sick. The theme is Health and Safety. I organized the meeting and got most of the stuff together, with M's help. They will be making first aid kids and talk about safety. They'll also make firefighter hats and play a firefighter relay (they'll have to put on their hats and some big boots, run across the floor, blow out a candle, and run back to give the boots to the next boy.) Should be fun.

Meanwhile, I worked with R on his vocabulary words because he has a test on Friday. I'm impressed with his sight reading skills. Funny, though, they don't teach phonics at his school. When I asked him to sound out a word, he looked at me like I was weird and named the letters in the word instead of sounding it out. So, I taught him how to sound out words. I did this because he saw the word "car" and quickly said that it was "color". I guess that he just saw the first letter and quessed....strange. But, all in all, he got more than 90% of the words right on the first try, so I told him how proud I was of him.

I have a long day tomorrow. I have to drive to Chicago, leaving at 6:00am and I won't get home until about midnight. Some folks are spending the night, but I don't want to be away more than I already am. Then I'm home until Monday, when I'll fly to Cincinnati for one night. Then I'll be done traveling for awhile. Whew! By the way, M is being quite a trooper about all this traveling, which makes it so much easier for me. He says "well, it's your job" and "I know you're not doing this because you want to." He also appreciates all my efforts to get home quickly. I sure love that man!

3 comments:

jennavar said...

Whewee!! One more to go until the home stretch. I'm so sorry R wasn't feeling well today. That is such a bummer to not feel good.

Sounds like a fun meeting. Way to go organizing and getting stuff together with your already busy schedule.

It is strange how they do word memorization. At our school some words they learn with phonetics (sounds like wh, ch, th, etc) but some have to be taught by sight. Wait until you get to the new math strategies. Very strange :}

CaliforniaGrammy said...

What a fun fireman relay game! I love the blowing out the candle part, did you make up that game? Very clever, if you did. I bet the boys will be giggling . . . or do boys DO that?

Give R a kiss to make him feel better for me.

One more trip for you and I'm glad you're done for a while, I know you hate to be away from your sweet family. And we love M too, he's a real trooper and a great dad and hubby!

It's funny how the teaching to read strategies change through the years. It seems like "See Spot . . . See Spot run" I guess each generation has a "better" way. Oh well, as long as the kid loves to read in the end . . . that's my strategy and I'm sticking to it!

SeattleS said...

What a busy life!! Glad the travelling is about over for awhile: hotels get old real quickly. As do airplane flights, security checks, taxis, etc.
The fireman relay does sound fun! I want to play!! :-)