![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
One of the Three R's
Apr. 11th, 2024 06:35 amThe cats woke me up earlier than normal this morning, I assume because the sounds of high winds are bothering them. There's a line of fairly gnarly storms on the way, though by mid-afternoon we ought to be out of the worst of it. I may skip running today and just lift. Since the weather's getting warmer I'll need to begin adjusting my schedule to get up earlier so I can run before it gets too hot, and perhaps have a nap in the afternoons. I've never exactly learned to nap properly and tend to sleep for a couple of hours, rather than thirty minutes to one hour, then I can't sleep that night.
Handwriting Reconsidered - Can a step backward carry us forward? I normally don't weigh in on this stuff. I don't have kids and generally don't care about education - I hated school. But I'm interested in handwriting.
We didn't officially learn cursive until sixth grade, when we were taught the Zane-Bloser Method. I got very poor marks, and the teacher constantly criticized my work, causing my mother to start hounding me about my "sloppy" and "terrible" handwriting. Here's the thing, though.
Four years earlier, with my mom's blessing and encouragement, I started learning cursive from our next door neighbor, Mrs. Lemons, a retired school teacher. Each week I'd head to her house with a pad of lined paper, pencils, and my practice sheets, and she taught me to write cursive by the Palmer Method. Mom cautioned me not to use it on school work since I wasn't supposed to know this yet, but I used it at home to write in my diary, write stories, letters, etc. By the time sixth grade came around, it was difficult for me to change my writing style enough to conform to what that teacher wanted, and the result was my "awful" handwriting.
A few years ago, because I'm nothing if not perverse, I bought myself a set of Palmer copybooks and worked to restore my handwriting to its original Palmer style. I still occasionally have people mention what elegant writing I have. So :P~~~~~~~~~ Mrs Dixon, you old harpy.
It may also have something to do with the fact that I'm hyperlexic, aka "precocious reading." I didn't get the number part and numbers still sometimes baffle me, and I have almost no mathematical ability. When I have to get six-digit login codes I prefer to copy and paste them, and if I have to manually type the code in, it's best I read it aloud to make sure I'm getting the numbers right. I have no idea why my brain does this shit to me.
You'd think that would make language learning easier, and to some extent it does. I recognize lots of kanji, but can't string a sentence together in Japanese to save my life. God help me if I have to ask where the train station is, but I can read the ingredients on a package of food.
Anyway, I'm not putting my bird feeders out or anything until this rain passes through. I shouldn't need to water the garden either, but we recently bought a soil moisture meter than connects to our Ambient Weather station, and I'm curious to compare the rainfall amount to the reported soil moisture. The garden's going well right now, and I even finally have pumpkins sprouting up, so we're going to pick up some stuff at Tractor Supply this weekend and try building a trellis for them.
Handwriting Reconsidered - Can a step backward carry us forward? I normally don't weigh in on this stuff. I don't have kids and generally don't care about education - I hated school. But I'm interested in handwriting.
We didn't officially learn cursive until sixth grade, when we were taught the Zane-Bloser Method. I got very poor marks, and the teacher constantly criticized my work, causing my mother to start hounding me about my "sloppy" and "terrible" handwriting. Here's the thing, though.
Four years earlier, with my mom's blessing and encouragement, I started learning cursive from our next door neighbor, Mrs. Lemons, a retired school teacher. Each week I'd head to her house with a pad of lined paper, pencils, and my practice sheets, and she taught me to write cursive by the Palmer Method. Mom cautioned me not to use it on school work since I wasn't supposed to know this yet, but I used it at home to write in my diary, write stories, letters, etc. By the time sixth grade came around, it was difficult for me to change my writing style enough to conform to what that teacher wanted, and the result was my "awful" handwriting.
A few years ago, because I'm nothing if not perverse, I bought myself a set of Palmer copybooks and worked to restore my handwriting to its original Palmer style. I still occasionally have people mention what elegant writing I have. So :P~~~~~~~~~ Mrs Dixon, you old harpy.
It may also have something to do with the fact that I'm hyperlexic, aka "precocious reading." I didn't get the number part and numbers still sometimes baffle me, and I have almost no mathematical ability. When I have to get six-digit login codes I prefer to copy and paste them, and if I have to manually type the code in, it's best I read it aloud to make sure I'm getting the numbers right. I have no idea why my brain does this shit to me.
You'd think that would make language learning easier, and to some extent it does. I recognize lots of kanji, but can't string a sentence together in Japanese to save my life. God help me if I have to ask where the train station is, but I can read the ingredients on a package of food.
Anyway, I'm not putting my bird feeders out or anything until this rain passes through. I shouldn't need to water the garden either, but we recently bought a soil moisture meter than connects to our Ambient Weather station, and I'm curious to compare the rainfall amount to the reported soil moisture. The garden's going well right now, and I even finally have pumpkins sprouting up, so we're going to pick up some stuff at Tractor Supply this weekend and try building a trellis for them.
