Soggy Georgia Spring

Last year's tenants have moved on to a more secure location. This abandoned nest dangles over the very busy street in front of our house.

March blew in and out of west-central Georgia this spring: freak snow storm to start the month and flash flood warnings to end it. I guess the old saying "fast or feast" is true. We've been on outdoor water restrictions for the past few years because of drought conditions. This month's precipitation may have corrected the deficit. Still, the dogwood, bradford pear, and redbud trees are blooming. Even a soggy day is pretty here this time of year.

Puddles everywhere today!

Dogwood and azaleas.

Blurry bee in the azaleas. I need a new camera.

Crepe Myrtles wait until later to bloom, but the beautiful bark compensates!

Vocabulary: Elementary Math and Science

I devote much of my time as an SLP for Deaf/Hard of Hearing students to vocabulary development. Although I consider most words worthy of teaching, NCLB pretty much dictates that targeting academic vocabulary is a "more worthy" use of time and resources. So, I'm always on the hunt for appealing Websites as resources, especially for math and science. Here are a few sites that I particularly like.

MATH:
Tennessee Academic Vocabulary Project
Harcourt Animated Math Glossary
Jenny Eather's Maths Dictionary
National Library of Virtual Manipulatives


SCIENCE:
Tennessee Academic Vocabulary Project
LearningScience
EdHeads

Too Cute

A quarter of a century spent sitting at a low, kidney-shaped table surrounded by 5 - 12 year-old children has left me with more than a few good stories: some sad, some funny, but all touching. Today's story was just too cute. It came at the end of an hour-long therapy session as I hurried four giggling hard-of-hearing fourth-graders to gather their book bags for the bus trip home. The smallest of the group lopped his mesh bag onto our work table. I watched bemusedly as a thick, creamy goo oozed a two-foot wide puddle across the table, some stray splotches plopping onto the carpet. It looked like sunscreen to me. As I stood there trying to figure out why this child was carrying sunscreen in his book bag and also why it had exploded, his mother-hen classmate solved the mystery. "I told you to eat your ice cream, not put it in your book bag!"

He calmly plucked the crushed Styrofoam cup out of the bag and threw it away. There went the anticipated snack for the ride home! If he was ruffled by his mistake, his dignified walk down the hall did not betray him.

Asperger Syndrome, Bullies, and School

For an interesting view of Asperger Syndrome, an area of special interest to me, take a look at the 4/4/07 or the 4/28/07 video on ABC News. Each segment includes Dr. Jed Baker, a psychologist with expertise in this form of Autism.

A House Is a House: Language Lessons for Young Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing Students

I created the slideshow (embedded from slideshare) below for use with my young deaf/hard-of-hearing students. They enjoyed learning vocabulary words and answering WH questions forms (where and who) in an interactive format. Since slideshare only presents a screenshot of the slides, this version is not interactive. However, I did create notes on how to easily create the navigational structure for interaction. The notes are available on the slideshare site.

Note: (3/11/09) I have added instruction for possessive nouns and pronouns to this slideshow. Look for a revised version on slideshare later this month.

Language Lesson A House Is a House

View more presentations from ewhites. (tags: instruction animal)

Snowy Georgia March

We awoke this morning to steadily falling snow - about an inch accumulation - and thunder: a phenomenon appropriately termed thundersnow. Yesterday morning's Weather.com winter storm prognostications convinced us to change our plans to spend the entire week-end with our daughter in North Carolina. We drove home a day early, not wanting to drive in snow/sleet. Though the decision translated our already brief visit into a less than 22 hour one, we were able to attend her spellbinding MFA thesis reading of Us and the Wondrous Secret. We also met the program members of her writing community, so the visit was delightful in every way. Also, on the upside, the shorter North Carolina visit afforded us a surprise Atlanta dinner with our son on the way home. I'm glad to be off the road, but am missing those babies.

I used the strange weather as an excuse to experiment with video on Blogger. Please pardon the poor resolution/unedited video. My good video camera is broken, and I used an OLD digital still camera in its place. I'm also having Windows Movie Maker woes with this computer (suspect that this has more to do with the amount of video I have stored on the four year old pc, rather than anything else).

I inserted this example just to see how Blogger handles video. I am also experimenting with converting files from mov to wmv format. Downloaded a free tool, Any Video Converter, from Download.com. Seems to have worked just fine. Note...I later deleted that video and uploaded another in mov format. Seems that Blogger likes that format just as well. However, because I expect to insert this video in PowerPoint for a language lesson tomorrow, I needed the wmv version.

Volkswagen Cousins

Daddy Saturdays Usually Meant Fun...

especially if our adventures included the 1960 VW convertible...and most especially if the Bug was pointed to the Aquatic Club pool, packed with a picnic lunch. For the 1963 summer Saturday preserved here, our first cousins accompanied Beth and me -- a rare treat. Tom, the youngest of our foursome, had been up to some unremembered, but most assuredly wild antics. The unreserved grins that my younger sister and I sported hinted at his mischief, and his own proud smile confirmed it. Will, always the soberer of those two, patiently waited for Tom to finish so that Grandad could snap the picture. When we finally puttered out of the driveway, Daddy revved the engine, and the convertible wind spread bigger smiles on our five, six, and eight year-old faces. Today, almost 46 years later, I don't know what Tom did to entertain us, only that he did.

I love this picture...everything about it: the sepia tone, the car, my young Dad, our summery towheads and suntanned arms, glimpses of a whitewall tire, Raybans, nubby bathing suits, lanky arms and unashamed, pooched bellies, the boys' crew cuts, my sister's ever-present ponytail, my own untamed hair, and the outline of my grandmother's camellia bushes. Even the streaks on the picture serve to remind me of Grandad pulling the print out of the Polaroid camera, waving it around in an effort to speed the development process, and finally rolling on the fixative to stop the development. Mainly, though, I love the dancing eyes above those grins.