My evaluation of Patrick's preschool year

It's been an unusual long time since my last post. There hasn't been any particular reason, but there has been definitely many things I have been meaning to write, and I hope I get to each of them in the upcoming weeks (months?).

Today I'm going to talk about Patrick finishing his first year of preschool. On the last day my husband and I went to the school to thank the teachers for all their patience and dedication to our Patrick. The teacher said Patrick was a very pleasant boy the whole year, and that he improved quite a lot, specially on his speech. She mentioned she is putting a suggestion to move Patrick, and another 2 kids from his group to the afternoon program. She believes these three kids have improved the most and would benefit greatly from more challenging activities, which are offered to the afternoon class. It isn't guaranteed that the change will happen, but it looks like a good possibility!

Patrick can count (sometimes) up to 10, however, he often likes to go by pairs. When he is getting ready to go down the slide, for example, instead of counting 1, 2, 3 and go, he says: 2, 4, 6 and go! We don't know why he does this, but I actually find it funny. He doesn't know his ABCs, and can't sing any song, but he is happy to do the body movements each songs invites (Head and Shoulders, Wheels on the Bus, Itsy Bitsy Spider). He is able to sort by colors, but he is able to name only 1 or 2 colors. He only differentiates circles from lines, not any other shape. He may be able to identify one or two letters, and this is just sometimes. His drawing is still very similar to that of his 18 month old brother. Based on this skills, I could say that Patrick wasted all his year at preschool, because, really, he didn't learn much, and also, he has learned these same things from me at home.

But I didn't send Patrick to special preschool to learn the alphabet, so to be honest, I'm not too concerned about all that. Right now, when it comes to Patrick's skills, my two biggest concerns are his language and social skills, and these were the main reasons why he attended preschool. When he started school, Patrick was just beginning to put two words together, it was very rare that you would hear "mommy come", or "baby eat." And if having a limited vocabulary wasn't enough, his pronunciation was very poor, too, making it difficult for anyone to understand. Today, his pronunciation of most words are close to how they are supposed to sound. He has mastered putting two words together, and he's slowly beginning to use three words, like "Mommy come here". Now I have a very talkative toddler, and I attribute that to the school. Every single day they sang at school, did pretend play with friends, learned new vocabulary -different from what he would have been exposed at home, and all of this was directed by special education teachers who knew, better than me, how to help him achieve all that.

In regard to his social skills, a year ago Patrick wouldn't play if there were other kids close to him. He would step back and observe all the time. If we were at the playground or the soft room, he would prefer to watch them play, wait for them to be gone (or at least not too close), and then he would imitate what the other kids were doing. Today, Patrick doesn't mind the other kids. He is able to play his own games while kids are next to him, and that's an improvement that I attribute to him being able to play, eat, sing, work... every single day with other kids at school. There is, of course, much room for improvement, for instance, it would be great if Patrick actually played with the kids, rather than just not mind that there are children around him, but I will talk about this on my next post. In the meantime, let me end this post with a few pictures of Patrick's school days.

Waiting for the bus

Patrick running to us after his last day of school

Patrick and his teacher!

We like to hang Patrick's arts and crafts. He likes to point and say "Packi did!"

We took a pirate boat tour on the Potomac to celebrate his last day of school

Pirates stealing the treasure! We better get them!

Patrick misses riding the bus, and says he misses his teacher and friends as well. Fortunately, this long school break happens during the summer (when the weather is nice and we can do all sorts of outdoor activities) so I hope he has been having as much fun with us as he seems to have when he is in school!