Calvin has been in preschool for about 3 months. The week before he started, I wondered if I would make it through the week. I specifically remember two instances that brought me to that conclusion.
1. Monday- I put laundry in washers and realized I was out of dryer sheets. I loaded the kids in the car to accomplish the simple mission of buying some at the grocery store. How hard is that, right? The 5 seconds it took us to get out of the car and to the doors of the store were all Calvin needed to disappear. gone. The store is in a shopping center so I started looking in stores I thought he might be in. The ice cream store, Subway, stores we had been before. Just when I was about ready to start calling 911, Calvin came running toward me holding this:
"Look, Ma, monkey!" He had stolen a movie from the hardware store. Luckily no one noticed when I walked into the store with it and put it back on the shelf.
2. Tuesday- Hadlee and Calvin were outside playing. After a while Hadlee came in for a minute. About 3 minutes later I went to make sure Calvin was still outside and he was still right there playing. I waited a few more minutes and checked again. Gone. I walked around our building looking for him and when I got to the back I saw him coming out of the housing office with two ladies who work there. One just happens to be over all of campus housing. Apparently Calvin got into an open minivan. So I had to stand there while Head of Housing Lady lectured me about how she could have driven off with him in the van. Anyway, the whole situation ended with them asking if there was something wrong with him since he didn't really talk and me crying.
The rest of the week wasn't as hard but after starting my week like that it was hard to recover.
School came just in time. His school was only 4 hours a day in Price so I wondered if he would be okay with the 8am-2pm schedule but he did great. I just sent him with his gluten free/dairy free lunch everyday and he loved it. He has learned so much in the past few months.
He has even mastered some of the goals on his IEP. He can match all upper case letters and he can match all lower case letters and he is potty trained. (Thought it would never happen.) Since that report he is doing amazingly well with his numbers too. He knows all the numbers 1-10 by sight and even most of them up to 20. He is getting so much better at communicating too. He has about a week and a half break and then he will start summer school. It's 4 hours a day for 6 weeks and he can't wait for it to start again.
1. Monday- I put laundry in washers and realized I was out of dryer sheets. I loaded the kids in the car to accomplish the simple mission of buying some at the grocery store. How hard is that, right? The 5 seconds it took us to get out of the car and to the doors of the store were all Calvin needed to disappear. gone. The store is in a shopping center so I started looking in stores I thought he might be in. The ice cream store, Subway, stores we had been before. Just when I was about ready to start calling 911, Calvin came running toward me holding this:
"Look, Ma, monkey!" He had stolen a movie from the hardware store. Luckily no one noticed when I walked into the store with it and put it back on the shelf.2. Tuesday- Hadlee and Calvin were outside playing. After a while Hadlee came in for a minute. About 3 minutes later I went to make sure Calvin was still outside and he was still right there playing. I waited a few more minutes and checked again. Gone. I walked around our building looking for him and when I got to the back I saw him coming out of the housing office with two ladies who work there. One just happens to be over all of campus housing. Apparently Calvin got into an open minivan. So I had to stand there while Head of Housing Lady lectured me about how she could have driven off with him in the van. Anyway, the whole situation ended with them asking if there was something wrong with him since he didn't really talk and me crying.
The rest of the week wasn't as hard but after starting my week like that it was hard to recover.
School came just in time. His school was only 4 hours a day in Price so I wondered if he would be okay with the 8am-2pm schedule but he did great. I just sent him with his gluten free/dairy free lunch everyday and he loved it. He has learned so much in the past few months.
He has even mastered some of the goals on his IEP. He can match all upper case letters and he can match all lower case letters and he is potty trained. (Thought it would never happen.) Since that report he is doing amazingly well with his numbers too. He knows all the numbers 1-10 by sight and even most of them up to 20. He is getting so much better at communicating too. He has about a week and a half break and then he will start summer school. It's 4 hours a day for 6 weeks and he can't wait for it to start again.
Calvin with his teacher Cindy and one of the classroom aides, Connie. He loves them both.
They have these hopscotches along the sidewalk outside the classroom doors and he has to stop at everyone and point to the numbers and count.
He has some compulsive tendencies that I was worried about for a while, but there are days I wonder if the compulsions will be his saving grace. He needs more repetition when it comes to learning than Hadlee did and I think him compulsively naming letters and numbers and saying letter sounds might be the only way he would learn it. I guess time will tell, but I am so proud of how far he has come.
