This Boy...
This boy pulled the seatbelt all the way from the back of the van and then yelled, "Look Mom, I'm skiing!!" as he went side to side.
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This Boy...
This boy went for his speech evaluation yesterday. You might remember that earlier in the summer, I talked about Nolan taking speech therapy during the school year. He quickly said, "No, I not need peach cass. I talk just pine." Any time it was brought up, he would continue to object so I stopped talking about it in front of him but continued to work with the school system to set up our necessary appointments and evaluations.
Two weeks ago, a woman from the school system came over to our house to evaluate him to see what "special services" he may benefit from. (It's all part of the process and just hoops that we have to jump through in order for him to get preschool speech services). I knew he wouldn't want to cooperate if he knew that it was for speech so we told him that she was just coming over to play with him and that she wanted to see how smart he was. After working with him for about 20 minutes, she confirmed that he was "exceptionally bright" and "in need of no other services except speech" and then she left.
Next step took place yesterday when we went to Melayna's elementary school for his evaluation with the speech teacher. Again, I didn't want to tip him off in advance to the speech portion so I just told him that we were going to Laynie's school to meet one of the teachers and she would play games with him and things. Unfortunately, he was a bit disappointed from the beginning because the last time we went to Laynie's school for games, it included a carnival and bounce houses. Oops! Well, we'd have none of that yesterday -- just a workbook with pictures. Mrs Leuw sat him down in her classroom and then flipped through the pages one at a time asking him what picture was on each page. She told him that she "wanted to see how smart he was" and started on page one. He started out pretty enthusiastically with the first several, but as she continued to flip the pages he became more and more quiet with his answers. Plus she stopped long enough after each picture to take notes and write things down. He watched her and finally said, "Are you going to ask me about every single picture in this book 'cuz that's going to take forever!?" She reassured him that she wouldn't but I don't think he believed her. After a few more, (and she kept writing), he asked, "Why does everyone want to see how smart I am?" He wasn't asking in a snotty way, I think he finally figured out that he was being evaluated and it was almost as if he wondered where he measured up - and I could tell that he wasn't comfortable all of the sudden, even though I was in the room. He started looking around and shifting uncomfortably in his seat. And when she asked him to start repeating sentences that she read from her book, he obeyed, but did it very hesitantly and I doubt she could really understand him. It was like he just quit trying at that point. :-(
She says that he definitely has problems with several sounds but each sound has a year of age when it should be mastered. "F" should have come by the age of 3 or 4 and then many of the others will come before second grade. He qualifies to receive help, but she admitted that at this point, she will only help him with the letter "f" and when he masters that, she'd be finished with him until he enters kindergarten and the teacher notices his problems. Then they'd began working on the next sound that kindergartners should be ready for. Hearing her say that tells me that maybe we'll just get work to do with him from home and not make him go through "peach cass" after all until he's older.
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This Boy...
This boy was working on the letter "P" this week at home. We talked about "Pounding" with hammers and "Painting Paper Plates". We read books about "picnics" and "parachutes". Then he painted several different plates by himself to look like animal faces. This project took him two days.
The "after"...
I love doing life with "this boy".
