What is M up to these days?
Play based pre school at a local public school, 3 hours a day 4 days a week
It's an inclusive classroom for 3 and 4 year olds. I love that they don't separate the ages; 3 and 4 year olds are together. Up to 1/3 or her class are kids with special needs, another third are kids that are considered "at risk" due to socioeconomic background and/or for whom English is a second language and the rest are "typically" developing with no "at risk" designation.
She has transitioned well and much more smoothly than we were expecting.
Some of her early accomplishments ... She takes off her coat, hangs it up and empties her backpack into her cubby upon arriving. She chooses activities for herself, listens intently and participates during circle time and cleans up her area after snack time.
PT (physical therapy), OT (occupational therapy) and ST (Speech Therapy) are integrated into her time at school. She qualified for 60 minutes of ST a week, 60 minutes a month for OT and 45 minutes a month for PT. Some of this will be one on one, but it's mostly conducted in small groups.
She's still seeing one of her Early Intervention (EI) therapists at Easter Seals, for an additional 45 minutes of speech therapy a week. Now that she has aged out of EI we'll need to get insurance approval for any therapies outside of the school setting and our insurance will only cover 60 therapy sessions per year. That's less than 1/5 of the therapy she had in IE. Yes, school and the therapy she gets there will help, but I'm not sure it will be enough. We'll see.
We've decided the lion share of these 60 sessions will go towards ST with some additional going toward aqua therapy, which she probably won't start until February. Water therapy will be good for her sensory system and she'll work with an OT and PT in the pool. We'll re-evaluate things in March to see if we need to add any additional appointments.
She is delayed in speech, and large and fine motor skills but is making great strides. She'll use 3 words together to convey her wants and needs. She initiates conversations and uses words appropriately in context. Her receptive language is great so she understands most of what's said and is able to follow simple directions.
Our biggest concern with her large motor is safety. While she has the skills, for example, to navigate stairs or most playground equipment, she is easily distracted. She just took quite a tumble a couple of days ago at the park. She was watching a kid, stepped off of the equipment without paying attention and fell down several stairs as a result.
Our little M. She is such a sweet kid. She often lets her baby sister have her way without any prompting from us. The other day Isla was upset about something and M brought her a toy to comfort her. She gets really excited about going for a walk, taking papers out of her back pack, feeding Maddie (our dog), "helping" with Isla or any of the chores or housework. She loves computers, Cuties commercials, Madeline, cell phones, Pups (the first of her stuffed animals-a dog- that I've actually seen her carry around), and books. Right now her favorites are I Spy books, Madeline, My Two Hands/My Two Feet, The Feel Good Book, Cows that Type, Where is Baby's Birthday Cake, and Sisters are for Making Sandcastles.
