Speech Therapy and the dependent mother.

I had a meeting with Drew's regular speech therapist today and she said that Drew is ready to be done with his weekly speech sessions. I am happy and nervous. I like that safety net of having professionals interacting with him each week. I am happy that I will now have more time at home on Tuesday afternoons though. It will be nice to walk Kat to school and to come home for a couple of hours before going off to work for the evening.

Ms. J said that Drew is extremely bright and has a terrific memory. That he is ready for Kindergarten in the fall. The funny part is that Drew isn't eligible to go to Kindergarten this fall, he needs to wait until the fall of 2012 to start Kindergarten!

We'll keep meeting with the speech therapist until May and then we'll do an IEP for Drew's 4 year old preschool year. After that all bets are off as to whether he will remain in the special ed program for hearing or not. If he continues to behave as a typical student he will lose his IEP and will no longer be followed by a team of teachers, speech therapists, audiologists and social workers. Again, that makes me feel happy and nervous.

Is it just that teachers are human too?

Today at drop off Kat's teacher pulled me aside and asked if there was anything we wanted her to be doing with Kat for the rest of the school year. Such an odd question that I can't get to the bottom of. Is she asking for permission to ride her hard and make her learn a lot? Does she just want to know if we have expectations that we haven't spoken of yet? I am not sure.

What I do know is that we want Kat to have a lovely kindergarten experience. We want her to paint and play and sing and dance. We want her to enjoy picture books and trips to the library and sunny days on the playground and drippy ice cream cones. We want her to have a wonderful, wonderful childhood. Of course we want her to learn meaningful information at school. We want her to feel like school is fun and that learning is worth working for. But we don't want her burnt out on school and we don't feel like she needs to learn extra just to "get ahead." She is already ahead.

I think I need to speak with the teacher again...

Parent Teacher Conferences.

We just returned from Kat's parent teacher conference at the Montessori school. Not big changes there. Kat is well liked, Kat is mature, Kat is kind, Kat is gifted. Well, the gifted label is a new one from this school but not a new one to us in general.
Kat is working on cursive writing, multiplication, land forms, painting, practical life, and using a dictionary. We're pleased.

Mind games.

Ay yi yi! Yesterday I had a brief, unplanned moment alone with Kat's public school teacher. Ms. M asked me where we intended to send Kat to school next year and we told her that we were waiting to hear back from the GATE school and I crossed my fingers in the air. Ms. M rolled her eyes at me and said, "I don't think you have anything to worry about." and walked away.
Ummm...100 applicants, 12 spots. Oh sure, that's a walk in the park!
Then again, maybe she knows something we don't?

Education today.

Our governor just proposed a new state budget that would cut educational expenditures by the state something like $400 per child. The local school districts are in a panic. I am baffled.

I've been wondering why we can't go a little more low tech in the classroom these days. Why do we need $200 worth of math textbooks per child when the basics have been taught for ages using nothing but a blackboard, some chalk and either a slate or paper and pencil? Why can't we pull out old textbooks to use? Of course, I know that books get old and useless. Information becomes outdated...but how outdated can 2x2=4 become?

Is there honestly nowhere to cut back?

Science fair.

Kat participated in her first school science fair yesterday. She was over the moon! Last month we received a letter from the school inviting the students to participate and I asked her if she would like to. Once she said yes, I asked her what she wanted to do her project on. With no hesitation she said, "Why can't astronauts go to Jupiter?"
We headed to the library and found the appropriate books, she read them and was ready to make her poster.
We helped her cut out the paper and I showed her how to paint the lines of Jupiter's clouds but other than that, this is all hers. We were so proud!

We invited the whole family out to see her science fair and many were able to make it. Grandma Chris and her boyfriend Ken came. Grandpa and Nana, Aunt Jenny and Aunt Kathy, and Pete's Uncle Karl all came. Such a nice evening!