Grandparents' Breakfast

Tomorrow is grandparents' breakfast at Jonah and Jill's school. After last year, I have a plan. I will have them both spend the night. I think I will make spaghetti and garlic bread for supper. Then we will get up very early and get to the school by 7:00 (is that early enough?) and park in the handicapped spot right out front. Then we will wait in the car until school opens at 7:30. Then we have to visit both classrooms to say they will be attending the breakfast and then we can stand in line. Last year they had some cold scrambled eggs, sausages, sweet rolls and fruit along with milk, juice and coffee. I think I will bring my own coffee.

Last year, I waited too long to get there and had to park about 4 blocks away and then walk all over the school to collect the kids and then found out we had to visit their classrooms. My knees were killing me and I was limping badly by the time I got to the back of a very long line. It was held outside in the covered pavillion and it was steamy hot as it will probably be tomorrow.

Why do I do it? Well, it's for the kids and not for the breakfast. And it is fun to talk to the other grandparents. The school was surprised last year by the huge turnout. Wish me luck.

School

I went to the school last night to learn about the curriculum. My grandson has two teachers. His home room, math and science teacher is a man. Jonah says he is the best teacher ever. He has math homework every night. They are doing graphs. I met his language and reading teacher for the first time. She seemed very nice but I am worried.

Jonah has struggled with reading. He repeated kindergarten. His teachers have been involved and caring. He has gone to summer school for reading every single summer. He has had tutors. We knew he had some learning difficulties but it took a long time to get him tested. When they finally tested him, the results were inconclusive. He didn't have dyslexia but he had a very difficult time staying on task. Finally, my daughter took him to a doctor and insisted that he take medication for ADHD. He started on a small dose of Concerta and that has helped a lot. But by then he was in fourth grade.

To make things worse, his younger cousin, Jill, is one of those children who seems to read very naturally and easily. She is in the gifted program at the same school.

I have helped in his classroom every year, come in for lunch sometimes and chaperoned many field trips. He likes that, but it was only in the middle of last year when he finally started really letting me help him with his homework. We worked on a long project on the computer and he got an A. After that, he started to cooperate. Every afternoon he came to my house and we did his homework. I was horrified. He had great ideas and a good vocabulary, but he couldn't sound out words and his spelling was almost unreadable. I think the final straw was when he kept spelling the word "make" as "mack". I admit to freaking out when I realized the depth of the problem. Even then we did start having success. His behavior was perfect and his grades improved a lot.

I made him write sentences. "I bake a cake and take it to the lake." and "I pack it in a sack and take it back." That got to be a joke with us except that I still see him do it. Just the other day, I saw it again - "mack". I also made him correct every single paper he did for spelling and grammar. He resisted a little but he did it. Sometimes his teacher gave him extra credit for that. He had a tutor at the beginning of the summer who seemed to help. I took him and stayed for the lessons. She said things like, "When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking." I was feeling hopeful, but then it came time for his annual visit with his dad in Tennessee. That trip was very important to him. He didn't get back in time to make up the tutoring. Now I'm wondering. Am I sure he knows his vowels?

His mother tries to help him but she has her hands full working all day, taking care of Jonah's little sister and making supper every night. She investigated a special school last year that seemed tailor made for Jonah but it was very expensive. There was a possibility for a scholarship, but then his grades improved and she let him stay on with his friends in the neighborhood school.

So now I met the language teacher and this is what she said.

She said they were doing a lot of independent reading. She talked about the importance of finding the right level book and the book they read at school should be the same book they read at home. I have never been able to get Jonah to finish the most simple book. Even when I read to him, he loses interest. He loves books, but he wants the encyclopedia-type books about snakes and dinosaurs, etc. The teacher said that they meet in small groups or one on one while the class reads independently. She said she doesn't want to know what happened in the book in these meetings but how the child feels about what he read. Jonah can read a page or two and have lots of feelings. She said the school library will be open next week. She talked about AR where they get points each time they finish a book and take a test on the computer. Then she said this is an FCAT testing year which is pass or fail to go to the next grade. She said they don't worry about spelling at this stage and they don't have spelling tests. They study the structure of words such as endings, etc. Spelling tests and the grade that followed seemed to be the only time he learned to spell new words.

One mother raised her hand and said her son kept spelling little words wrong. The teacher said, well, they shouldn't be making mistakes on sight words. So, Jonah is not the only one. Time was up. I didn't bother to ask any questions. I am going to write a note to the language teacher and explain why we are correcting all his papers and ask her to be supportive.

I have some flash cards for sight words and multiplication tables. They are going to grow a garden in science class and do their science projects at school. Jonah will like that. I feel like this year is our last chance.

Mom's Crazy Clock

I bought this clock as a present for my mother. It chimed every quarter, half and full hour for a while. For the past twenty years, however, it only chimes two or three times a year - always at 1:00, 1:15 and 1:30 - sometimes a.m., sometimes p.m. It startles us. We've long since become accustomed to its silence.

Once when it was new we had a mishap. My ex-husband was remodeling the kitchen in my mother's condo. He did a beautiful job. He always said the free jobs he did for people caused him the most problems. He was hammering away to remove an old cabinet when the clock on the other side of the wall fell down and sliced the back of the picture tube off of my mother's beautiful console television. I found out then that a beautiful and HEAVY piece of furniture with a broken television is essentially worthless. There was nothing we could do but buy her a new television from our own tight budget. The clock was fine. Maybe that was when it stopped chiming. I can't remember. It hangs on my wall now secured by a very large and sturdy hook. Someday, I guess this inexpensive, quirky clock will belong to Jaime or Cory.

Slice of Life - Under the Sea

Slice of Life is a weekly prompt to encourage writers to tell personal history stories. Click on the link to participate.




Jonah and Jill are lucky to live in Florida. These pictures are from a recent visit to the Florida Aquarium with Cory and Stephanie on their recent "staycation." They also took Jonah with them to a magical place near Ocala called Rainbow River. It is a natural springfed river where we used to go when Cory and Jaime were little. They got tubes and floated down the river with snorkels and masks. Stephanie said the kids had their faces in the water all day long. We don't get to the beach as often as we should, but Jonah loves to fish and swim at the beach on a big lake near our friend's house. He is my little nature boy.

Talent Show - Last Day at the Park

Jill and her partner sang and danced to "Can't Touch This" by M C Hammer

The judges liked it!

Jill and her partner won second place.

Good bye. Last day of 2011 park summer program. After more than 30 years of talent shows, there may not be a summer program at our park next year. The after school care program has already been cancelled.

For the last few years, Jonah and Jill have gone to the park after school and in the summer. They have gone skating, swimming, bowling, played basketball and football and taken cheerleading lessons. They have had art projects, dinners, dances, Halloween parties and all sorts of other activities. Today they had a talent show. Russell, the recreation program director, has become a friend of our family. He and my son have played golf several times. He announced today that there has been a talent show at this park almost every year since the 1970's. But now the county government has decided the program is too expensive. The staff have been given their notices. A few Tampa parks will continue offering after school and summer programs, but not our park. It is a shame. I'm not sure what all these kids are going to do after school now. I know that Jill and Jonah and their parents and their grandma will never forget the friends they made here and all the fun they had here.

The Help - Childhood memories

My mother didn't like this portrait of my brother and me because Mrs. Patilla fixed our hair in such an old fashioned way.

My sister-in-law and I went to see the movie The Help the other day. I loved it. I haven't read the book yet but Mary said it was great. We go to the movies together sometimes and occasionally we take my granddaughter, Jill, too, on a girls' outing to the mall. Seeing the movie brought back some of my earliest memories.

My mother was a working mom way back in the 50's. We had an older lady who came to our house to watch my brother and me. She cooked and cleaned and ironed for us as well as baby sitting. I know my mother didn't pay her very much. She was such a great help to my mom. I think it was when we lived in Russellville, Arkansas before we moved to Oklahoma when I was 7 years old.

She used to take us to her church which was across the street from our little rental house. I have a few old pictures of us when she took us to her house one time to meet her grandchildren. Her granddaughter's name was Naomi. Once she took my brother and me to a photograher appointment because my mother had to work. Mom was upset because she fixed our hair in such an old fashioned way.

I have two very clear memories of her cooking. One was a pecan pie and the other was rice pudding. She made it in the oven with a thick layer of cinnamon on top. My first experience with cinnamon. I remembering it bubbling in the oven and the aroma that filled the kitchen was amazing. I have never tasted rice pudding like that since and have never been able to duplicate the recipe. I loved you Mrs. Patilla!

Later on we had a teenage baby sitter in Oklahoma. Her name was Twila. She watched us in the summer. I don't think my mother knew that Twila's boyfriend used to come to the house sometimes. I remember bologna sandwiches or beanie weinies and Kool Aid for lunch. Twila was kind of mean. She made me watch American Bandstand every afternoon instead of cartoons. Thank you, Twila!

Cuchina

Jaime dropped by the other day. She was in a hurry, but I reminded her that I had a few little chores saved up for her when she had time. She hopped up on the sink with her boots on and started hanging up a little kitchen sign for me. She asked for a level, she asked if it was in the right place, but I just eyeballed it. It turned out that hammering the little nails into my old pine cabinets was difficult. Of course, after it was hung, we saw that it was a little off center and a little lopsided. Story of my life. Jaime says she will come back and fix it. I'm thinking maybe I should leave it that way to match all the other slightly crooked items hanging on my walls. I think there is a life lesson here about planning and doing something carefully.

A friend of mine admired two new plaques I hung myself and said, "They are crooked, but they are cute." Even my smallest granddaughter admired a picture in my bedroom the other day and said, "It's crooked." Is it just me? I would never tell my friend something was crooked. Children, on the other hand, what are you going to do? Anyway, the sign is cute.