Field Day

This week is the last full week of school for the regular school year. A's school chose to have their Field Day on Friday of last week, and the parents were invited to come and watch if we wanted to.

It was thrilling to see A having so much fun with the other kids, and being every bit as good at the activities as the others! Whereas he has some difficulties in the classroom holding pens and such, A's gross motor skills are perfectly on target; he can run, jump, and climb with the best. Z and I were both struck at how...normal...that day was, as we imagine "normal" to be. Both of us were very excited for A! And A's grin when we arrived was worth the visit, even if we didn't get to see him do one thing. Luckily, we got to spend about two hours with him and got to see him participate in a few activities before we brought him home with us at the end of the day.

Z and I loaded up Miss K after lunch and headed over there to see what we could see. A had a blast, and so did his sister. I could just see the wheels turning in K's head: so this is what school is like! Sure enough, she's been asking to go to school every day now. I (foolishly) tried to explain to her that she can't go, because she's just turned three. Little good that did. They do have public preschool here, but you have to be four years old and we now make more than the income requirement threshold, so she will not be attending. At least, not a public preschool.

Z and I have been talking, more so since Friday. K really loves learning things about all sorts of topics, she LOVES to create art in any form, and she is one of the most social kids I've ever seen, to the point of being annoying to other children sometimes. We may be putting her into a private preschool after she turns four just to help curb some of that exuberance and get her used to a classroom setting before she has to start kindergarten. She would undoubtedly love to do it now, but private preschool does cost money, and with the economy doing what it is recently...at this point we think that it is smarter to wait. She is already picking up a lot of things here at home: she knows all the letters and their sounds, can write a few and even read some simple words; same for numbers, although we're not getting math just yet. She does get the concept of addition and subtraction, though. And she knows her colors and shapes already, even weird ones like octagons. She is always asking questions about pretty much, well, everything, like 3-yr olds tend to do.

Z and I have also bandied about the thought of homeschooling, first for A (before we learned of his challenges), and then for K. At this point, public school is the best possible place for A; he gets some of the services he needs and lots of socialization with other more "typical" kids his age. I just can not duplicate that in a home school setting, and I'm not trained to do the OT and speech therapies -- although I do repeat some of the same things at home to supplement his school work. All of my hopes and willpower do not make up for actual training in those areas, though, and I recognize that.

As far as Miss Thang goes, K is going to have to lose some of that stubborn willfulness or I'm not going to be able to teach her anything. As it is, she listens to other people better than she does me, much to the consternation and bewilderment of her father and I. We're not sure where it's coming from, but we know without a doubt that if we don't get a handle on it now, ten years from now it will be worse. I've heard that it's just the age (3), so we'll see.

Good news! I might have a computer again this summer sometime, so all those pictures I have languishing on my digital camera can make their way blogward. I am glad I have the opportunity to use my husband's work laptop occasionally, but it does have its limitations on what I'm allowed to do with it. And putting outside software or photographs on it is a "no no".