I Win.

We have been testing this week in first grade, and my team teachers and I are exhausted. We have been sharing battle stories, and it is the most amazing therapy in the evening to laugh and laugh via the text at the end of the day.

We have this assessment we need to give to determine which kids have mastered their sounds for this point in the year. This is given whole class, and the students must sit and listen to me dictate a sound and they write the sound on their paper. The total number of sounds they will need to write down is 41. Some are blends, some are vowel sounds, some are consonants, etc. You get the gist.

Friends. This test is painful. I say a sound, and most kids will write it down and be ready for the next one. Some kids are day dreaming and are not even realizing I am talking. I try to walk around and monitor to make sure everyone is keeping up with me . . . but I never catch them all.

After I was about 5 sounds in, I see one boy just staring at his paper. His paper has about 4 holes in it and he has not written anything.

Me: Dude! What’s going on?

Student: My shirt was wet.

Me: How was it wet?

Student: I fell in a puddle at recess.

I look and the arms of his sleeves are wet. I scramble to get him a new paper and tell him to start at sound 6 and I will catch him up later. I told him to push up his sleeves.

He did not push them up. His second paper also got holes. But he was more positive this time.

Student: My new paper has holes, too. But I can still write the words down.

And I allowed it.

For f,l,s, and z, they have to come up with two ways to spell the sound because of our FLOSS rule, so they should write f, -ff and s, -ss, etc.

So for the consonant sound “r”, one of my poor confused little lads wrote:

r, -rr

We do the consonant y. I say “y” as clearly as I can. Another boy tries to repeat it back to me, but when he does, he is saying the y sound with what sounds like a short i sound at the end.

Boy: yuh-i?

Me: No, “y”

Boy: yuh-i?

Me: No. Everyone. Look at my mouth. “Y”

Still. One boy wrote down yi. Ironically, not the boy who was saying yi. That one wrote down just y.

We get to two sounds for long I. Those would be i (like in hi) and y (cry).

About three kids wrote: i, eye. Because eye was one of our red words recently.

Then we get to blends.

Me: Make sure you put down both sounds that you hear! These are blends! They are sounds like: bl, mp, ct, etc, and the kids did amazingly well on them.

And I kid you not, when I was trying to get them to just give me consonant “x”, a couple of them wrote “ks” because, if you really listen carefully, when you say the “x” sound, it sounds like a ks blend.

Me: Ok. Everyone touch #27 and make sure you at the right spot. The next sound is . . .

Girl: Wait! What was #26 again?

Me: (sigh)

I walk over to her. She hasn’t written anything since #19. I tell her to just start at 27 and I will catch her up later. This news is grievous to her and she melts into a puddle on the floor in despair.

And I pressed on and finished the test anyways. Caught her up later.

The next day, we had to do words and sentences, may the Lord bless me and keep me.

Would you like to hear some of the words this test wants the kids to spell? Of course you do.

Three of them were: thesis, cupid, and tripod.

Me: Look at my mouth. Look at me. Look at me. You need to see my mouth for this one.

Kids look at me. They also look like they aren’t having the best time. Neither am I.

Me: “th” “th” “th” thesis. Look at me when I say the first sound. “th”

And yet, a handful still wrote fesis. And I still feel it was a win because they thought I said the f sound, most likely because they didn’t look and listen when I asked, but the rest of the word is correct.

Me: Ok, the next word is cupid. Let’s tap out each syllable. First syllable: cu-listen! I am not saying the letter “q”. The letter “q” is not in this word. I am saying : “c . . . u” No one should be writing a q in this word.

Never the less, a few kids spelled cupid as qupid.

But, Friends. My team teacher had the most precious one of all. We have taught them that -dge says “j” at the end of words. So when she asked the kids to spell “jazz”, one precious little girl wrote

dgeazz.

And that is gold, my friends.

***

HD shot a buzzer beater in a game recently. See?

LD also did that recently, yet I did not get it on video.

***

Let us discuss the steer. The steer who sisters Meagan and Jess named “Marion” and my friend Erika named George and who I don’t want to name so my heart won’t get broken.

We had been getting him up over the weekend and the longest he could stay up was about 30-45 minutes before collapsing.

On Monday night after school, I was the first one home. I was wearing a dress, decided that was just fine, and put a work coat and muck boots and went to check on him.

This is what he looked like-

!

How long was he like THAT? So I work on trying to get him upright, and I just cannot at first. And I am in my stupid dress and leggings and down in the hay trying to move him. After awhile I got him all set up again and he would need to wait for David to come home and lift him up.

When David got home, he went out there and smacked George Marion on the butt and he just . . . stood up.

?

And that was the turning point. That evening he was up for about 3 hours and then the next morning, David made sure he was up at 4am . . . and I checked at 5am . . . and boys at 6:45 and he was still up.

And then do you know what he looked like after school that day?

So, yay, hooray! I think, and I am saying with the most caution I can, I think we did it.

But mostly, I want to say: I was right. I win. David said leave him, he will die, and I was like, nay, he might live.

And I win.

The other night, I told David I would put the calf to bed soon before I went to bed. This is completely unnecessary on my part, however, I feel better knowing he is upright and covered and hay and all cozy.

A bit later, I decided to get into my jammers.

Me: David! I know. I changed into my pajamas already. But it’s ok! Because I can wear my pajamas and still check on the calf!

And then I started wondering if that was a new lowpoint in my life?

Pajamas that also double as farm chore wear?

Thoughts?

Anyways. This is what George Marion looks like when he is all tucked in for the night.

It pleases me.

Happy Thursday.