Friday, January 19, 2007

paint your palette blue and grey

Having a lie in was decadent and delicious. I woke up feeling good except for my jaw, which has been sore lately. I clench my teeth while I sleep and sometimes wake up with headache and jaw pain. This would be remedied by wearing that thing my dentist made me but it doesn't fit properly anymore since Big Puppy got hold of it a few months ago and chewed it. I should probably get a new one before I push my teeth back into my gums.

Having the morning off is going to work out well for me, and I've decided to take the whole day at home and finish the edits to my commissioned scripts. I don't think it will take long, but it's something that gets harder to do the longer I put it off. It's easier to make edits when the client's comments are still fresher in my brain. Assuming I finish early enough I'm going to tidy up the house. Shawn will be pleased.

Our new mattress is being delivered tomorrow.

Tonight is date night. I'm not certain where we're going or what we'll do... but I'm looking forward to it. Tomorrow night we're supposed to have dinner with G&R and on Sunday night we're supposed to go out for dinner with R&K. I'm going to try and enjoy being social.

I spent some time this morning reading articles about the "invented spelling" that I wrote about yesterday, because I was so outraged by it. Frankly I was hoping to find a scholarly article that said my feelings about it were backed up by scientific research. Apparently not. Having read some arguments in favour of it and against it, I think I need to revisit my opinion a bit, or at least qualify it. I agree that it's okay for children to use invented spelling as part of their process of learning to write and that teachers and parents should encourage all attempts at writing to make it a positive experience they will want to continue. I still have a problem, though, with the teacher modeling invented spelling when she's writing for the class because children, especially very little ones, tend to think that adults are "right" about things. I think we can applaud a child for writing "kulerful" - coming up with letters and syllables that follow the rules and are easily understood - while still modeling correct spelling ourselves. That's what I think- balance.

The nap index is high today in spite of sleeping in, so I'll have to get started on Things I Must Do before the couch and fleece blanket grab me by the ankles as they are wont to do on cloudy grey mornings.


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