It's Report Card Time! How did Froot Loop do in his first 6 weeks of Full-Day Pre-K?

Well, we've already completed the first six weeks of the school year (really 5, but whatever, I don't pretend to understand how that all works). I had my parent-teacher conference last week with Froot Loop's teacher. 

Overall, things are going well academically. His literacy assessment has him testing in the first grade level. He's the highest in his class! He knows all of his letters, phonological awareness, rhyming, and concepts of print, including punctuation marks. His mathematical assessment also has him testing way above his level. He rote counted to 39, knows all the numbers, and basic 2 D geometry. He is also good at knowing mathematical concepts like shorter and longer, but still has trouble ordering them from shortest to longest (that's a very advanced skill for his age and he's actually almost got it). 

As far as the goals in his ARD, I'll break those down by goals. 

Occcupational Goals: basically, work on his fine motor skills. 

He is doing much better in this area. He's mastered straight line cutting and is starting to cut out shapes! He still has trouble with letter formations, but he's getting better all the time. He's also great at drawing people, which he could NOT do at the end of last school year. My guess is that the daily journaling I had him do over the summer really helped him out. I'm so happy! 

Speech Goals: aquisition of developmentally appropriate social language

He's working on it. He seems to be happy and willing to participate, which is a big step in the right direction. He still needs prompting for verbalizing and to stay on topic, but this is nothing we don't know, and that's the main reason he needs speech therapy. He is doing much better about joining in to play with his classmates and asking them to play with him as well. He is doing great at cooperative play in small groups too. 

Speech Goals: Developmentally appropriate articulation skills

He's getting much better at his consonant clusters and more articulate with his speech. Hooray! 

Social Skills: Adaptive Behavior

He is doing GREAT at imitating pretend play. When he first started last year, he wouldn't do this at ALL, and now he's mastered it! He has also mastered how to follow the classroom rules and follow teacher instructions. They're still working on getting him to participate more in songs and finger puppet plays and stuff though. He also is not very good about sharing! 

I am so happy! He's come such a long way in the short time he's been in school. They turned a rowdy 4 year old who couldn't talk well or follow directions or hold a pencil or scissors into a strong little boy who loves going to school and now gets along with his classmates and other adults. 

I haven't really talked much about Froot Loop's special needs over the summer because they were constantly changing. Sigh. This kid is so awesome. He really is. He's so incredibly intelligent. He's also definitely on the spectrum. He still has major sensory processing issues, but they evolve too. He's no longer afraid of swimming. He is still SUPER sensitive to lights and sound and textures though. He also has a CONSTANT need for proprioceptive input. He also has to let his internal dialogue run its course. If he has something he wants/needs to say, he can't do anything else until he's said it. He has his routine and he gets mad when it's broken. 

His teachers are working on pushing him out of his comfort zone, which he desperately needs. We're working on that at home too. I try to always just push him a little more every day and it seems to be helping. 

The autism is getting in the way of piano lessons for sure though. He does not want to learn anything new, and when he makes the slightest mistake, he can't handle it. Once he learns a song though, he masters it. Sigh. It's a struggle even getting him to practice most days. His teacher is amazing, though. AMAZING. Once again, his skill mastery is really far above his age. His fine motor skills are improving greatly. I'm proud of him. 

I'm proud of him.