We moved to Memphis June 15, so we’ve been busy unpacking and getting settled.

Here are a few pictures of our new home.

Sorry for the interruption, but our website has had some problems over the past couple of months and I’m just checking to see if we can post now or not.

I see a 3-year old who’s always wanting to make something during speech therapy.  Last month we made valentines and this week she told me, “I want to make another Valentine heart.”  I said, “Well, it’s a little late for valentines, but we could make a shamrock for St. Patrick’s Day.”  She excitedly said, “Ok!” then thought for a moment and told me “Hey, Patrick lives under a rock!”  Patrick is the starfish from the SpongeBob cartoons.

Our 5 year old friend Ivan has been learning A LOT of new words recently, especially since having tubes put in his ears.  His mom, Stephanie was impressed with his latest new word, “patch.”  He told her, “Daddy, patch hiney off!”  Translation: “Mom, get this bandaid off my bum!”

I see a first grade girl who speaks English as a second language and often has difficulty pronouncing new words. Just try to imagine how difficult it was for me not to laugh every time she substituted the word “turd” for “Arthur” while reading an Arthur story to me this morning.

Excerpt from a therapy session with a 1st grader who makes me laugh because (a) he is so typically boy and (b) he starts nearly every sentence with the word “well.”

Therapy goal: Name 3 items in a given category.

Today’s session:

Me: As fast as you can, tell me 3 things that are green.

Boy: Well, Hulk in the movie Hulk is green

Me: Right, can you think of any more?

Boy: Well, boogers are green too.

Me: That is true.  What else is green?

LONG PAUSE.

Boy (finally): Well, um, well, leaves are green.

Funny how that last one was the answer that took so long to come up with!

Angelina has been learning about letters at school. Big “A” is called capital “A”. Little “a” is called lowercase “a”. Today, she was trying to pull her pants up and complained, “They’re stuck on my capital toe!”

I have a “Silly Sentences” game in which kids can mix and match nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. to form sentences.  I use it to work on teaching correct grammar.  A first grade boy made up the following sentence today: “A green dinosaur ate a cat.”  I said, “Whew, that’s scary.  I’m glad I’m not that cat!”  He responded, “Well, that’s okay.  You can be the cat because dinosaurs don’t exist now.”

I introduced 2 kids to Jenga today.  I showed them how to find a loose block, take it out, and put it back on top of the stack.  I failed to tell them that the tower usually falls.  After about 2 turns, the blocks came crashing down with a loud racket.  Little Sara* felt horrible.  She said, over and over again, “I’m SO sorry, Mrs. Mohundro, it was me and Bob’s* fault!  I’m SO sorry!”

*Names have been changed.

I asked one first grader, “Who is the principal of your school?”  He named 3 or 4 people, none of whom were the principal.  I informed him, “Dr. Turner is the principal.”  He said, “Dr. Turner is the principal now?! I didn’t know.  I thought she was the boss of the school.”

Kid: Hey.  Hey.  Hey.  Hey.  Hey.

LuAnn: WHAT?

Kid (sniffing): My armpits smell good!