Tuesday 7 March 2017

Halfway through

We are now halfway through term one and I thought it was probably time for a little update.

As most of you would know, the year started with a very anxious me.  Quite concerned about how things would go and how Jonathan in particular would settle and be accepted.

Whilst the first few weeks haven't been 100% smooth sailing, they have exceeded my expectations.  We did turn up on the first day to find that there was work going on in the safe part of the playground that had just been fully fenced so that the Learning Support Unit kids have an enclosed place to play. This included temporary fencing.  TEMPORARY BLOODY FENCING! To say I was less than impressed was an understatement. All credit to Jonathan's teacher though, she got it sured up and for those 2 weeks made sure he was shadowed closely.


I also lost it big time on that first day. It was crowded and lots of noise.   Trying to keep track of Declan in all of it, and Chris having Jonathan and them not being able to find Jonathan's teacher, with my already pretty high anxiety about how things were going to go, just tipped me over the edge.  Not my proudest moment standing in front of a full school absolutely bawling. One thing it did seem to do was show Jonathan's teacher that I'm not an overbearing parent, but one that was really (and still is a bit) anxious about leaving my child in their care.

Fast forward 5 weeks in, Jonathan has taken to school like a duck to water. He's loving the learning and the other amazing little people in his class.  Having such a small class to model off is really beneficial. He is now doing pre writing activities and really loving numbers and letters. The whole class has started some intergration in with the 1/2 kids. His language is coming along, which I also think is contibuted to by the small group peer modelling.

We are still struggling to get people to close gates behind them, but we are slowly educating parents on why we are doing it. And I'm sure they don't want to be responsible for anyone's child getting out of the school!

As for Declan, well, he's settled the quickest this year than he has ever settled.  We are blessed to have his Kindy teacher again this year who has masses of special needs training and is just a beautiful soul. She has a beautiful relationship with Declan and also with me.  My hope this year is to be a bit more hands off with school around Declan, and that's happened already.  They are implementing really effective cool down strategies with him, that to begin with required me to model, but the school have taken these and run with them.

Over the next week or so we are setting goals around both the kids education, and I will hopefully get a fuller picture of how things are going, but at the moment, all is looking positive.

Kelly xx