Tired on Thursday

So around 11:30, I put a sandwich, some grapes and a small piece of gingerbread in a bag and walked up Main Street to the school to eat lunch and read with the 4th grader, Nick. First, I was there 5 minutes early and so was he. We didn’t meet last week because it was holidays for them so we hadn’t seen each other for two weeks. We went into the lunchroom and we unpacked our lunches. I ate mine and he messed his around. His mother is wasting her money buying them these prepackaged lunches because this is the third one I have seen him not eat.

While he was not eating, he was demonstrating how well he could say tongue-twisters so I wowed him with my rendition of "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers!" Then I remembered something that amused me no end when I was his age. I told him that in England we say that someone who didn’t understand what was going on didn’t know "…how many beans made five." So, how many beans DO make five? The answer to the question is, "A bean and a half and a bean and a half and half a bean and a bean and a half!" He found this as amusing as I had hoped and insisted on saying it over and over until he learned it. Then he said he was going to ask his dad how many beans made five when he got home after school!

We went into the auditorium to read and I read the next chapter of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. He was attentive but when I was through, he pulled out three Sonic the Hedgehog comics which he said he would like to read. I need to ask what the school policy is but *I* happen to think it is silly to ban comics so I said sure. But I told him I wasn’t familiar with the characters and I would ask lots of questions. He is an excellent reader. He read with feeling and made an excellent attempt to decipher words he didn’t know. What I found amusing was that not only did he read with emphasis but he also did different voices for the different characters! Most of the words he understood from contex but although he said "carcinerous pancreatic" correctly, he did not know the meaning specifically. When we got to new characters, he explained who they were and what was going on. Oh, one thing I found interesting was that he didn’t know that Col. was the abbreviation for colonel, but he only had to be told once.

About ten minutes before the end , he politely asked me if I would like to read and so I did. When it was time to leave, he asked if I would like him to bring the comics back next time we meet so I could read more of them. I said I would because quite honestly I was enjoying it when I knew who the characters were and what was going on. I told him that I thought it was a good thing to have two books going so we had lots to talk about. So, when I see him again in two weeks, after my trip, we will be going on with the first Narnia book and also his Sonic the Hedgehog comics! On the walk back to the classroom, he told me he thought I was a "cool mentor!" I thanked him and asked why. He said it was because I like comics and because I had an iPod! I then realized that I had the iPod tucked into my jeans pocket with the ear-pods hanging out because I didn’t want to leave it in my coat pocket which would  be left in the hall while I was somewhere else.

I got home and had enough time to go to the bathroom and brush my teeth before charging off to help Robin. She has a lot of catching up to do since she was off sick a few days so I asked her what she felt she needed help with urgently. To my surprise, it wasn’t her weekly essay she wanted to start on first but the rules for making plural of nouns.  Apparently somewhere in her past schooling, she had missed out on them {she is 27} and was floundering around. So, we reviewed then and I took her orally through her worksheet. We did get a good start on the outline of her essay as well. Since I am going to be gone for two weeks, I asked her if she would like an extra session this weekend and she agreed to Saturday morning at 10. She will have her children but they are old enough to keep themselves busy for an hour.

I am  exhausted!  Fred fixed vegetable soup for supper and I am enjoying it.

Until later…