Parent Teacher Conference

Today I had my first Parent Teacher Conference for Autumn. It was really enlightening. Autumns teacher talked really highly of Autumn and commented on how smart she was. She was impressed that she can count to 14 on her own and recognize all the numbers, and that she knew all her alphabet letters both capital and lower case. She said Autumn is very social and has made a lot of friends. There is one girl in particular whos name is Sierra and her Autumn are joined at the hip. It really makes me happy that kids are so forgiving of faults, and even though Autumn can't hold a conversation and answer their questions that the kids don't see or care about that.

The conference wasn't all praising, she asked me to work with Autumn on getting her to sit and be patient. She said Autumn will sit to do a task but as soon as she is done she is up running around, where other kids sit and wait to be told what's going on next. There is a circle time mat and the teacher used to have Autumn placed in the very front of the mat assuming Autumn would act better if right in front of the teacher. She has since moved her to the middle of the mat, and placed her between 2 students who have better speech and what the teacher refers to as "typicals." (Typicals are students who model age appropriate behavior during a specific activity.) She said moving Autumn to the middle of the mat has made all the difference. She can't get up and move and escape. She is surrounded by kids and handles the circle time much better.

Her writing and tracing of letters is at the level 3 year old are at. The teacher is impressed with the homework and how well Autumn does with it. The teachers 2 biggest concerns was getting Autumn to sit for an extended period of time w/out being distracted (and she is having me work with her at home) and her speech. The whole reason I was even interested in this preschool program was because of the speech therapy. But Autumn didn't qualify when I had her tested in May. The teacher has since reread the speech evaluation and doesn't agree with it. She talked to the Speech Pathologist and is having her reevaluated next week. What a relief! That was what I mainly wanted to talk to the teacher about during our conference. She said even she (who works with loads of kids all day long w/all kinds of delays and disabilities) has a hard time understanding her. So hopefully whatever the Speech Pathologist missed can be brought to her attention again through Autumns teacher.

So it was a successful conference. I teared up hearing Autumns teacher give her such praise and talk about how smart and good she is, and how the other kids in the class love her. One weeks curriculum was on friendship and they discussed the role of a friend and they gave each student a friendship bracelet to share with a friend in the class (Autumn is one of the younger students, many of these kids were in the same class together last year) and one girl went to Autumn w/out hesitation to share her friendship bracelet, which resulted in another little girl (Sierra who I mentioned earlier) being severely disappointed that she didn't get Sophia's bracelet and that she couldn't give Autumn her friendship bracelet. I am so proud of Autumn, this preschool and their program is really going to do wonders for her.

Here she is doing her homework. 2 weeks ago they talked about the letter P.

I am so proud!