Closing Out the School Year
The last week of school at TSD was an exciting one, filled with some very cute programs and field trips. Both boys loved their teachers and made several good friends.
Tian amazes us daily with his ASL and spoken English skills. He loves us to read books and doesn't care if we sign ASL or read aloud in English. He'll pay close attention either way. Tian is completely on-track with his peers and will do great in pre-k in the fall! We just gotta work on his "obeying" skills. At home and at school, he often thinks it's cute and/or funny to disobey, then produce a huge ear-to-ear grin.
Travis will be moving on to Kindergarten in the fall! Ken and I were prepared to keep him in pre-k one more year due to his language delay, but the teacher and counselor feel that he can move on to Kindergarten since he is academically ready. Travis is counting, identifying letters and numbers, writing letters, sequencing, and all the other things kids need to be doing to be ready for K. He comprehends ASL signed to him, but still struggles when it comes to his expressive language.
The counselor let us know that he would likely begin expressing more over the summer, then the structure (on which he thrives) and nature of Kindergarten would draw it out even more. Sure enough, Travis expressive language has grown my leaps just over the past few weeks. In the days leading up to his birthday, we talked about his birthday, counted down the days, packed the door prizes, and named his friends who would be attending. That single event motivated him to talk about future events more than he ever had before; they also led to him telling about past events. Once the party was over, he continued to talk about it for days. Monday morning, he told his teacher all about the party. That in itself was huge process.
Over the summer, we are doing a lot of reading, then having Travis (Tian, too) re-tell the story. I'm still editing a video that I'll post soon. I made a set of sight word cards and we plan to label everything in the house so that Travis can start identifying basic words or at least understand that the words mean something.
I'm SUPER excited about the teacher Travis might possibly have next fall, but don't know the details definitively, so I'll save posting about that for later.
Also on the school front is news about TJ. I'll save that for the next post....
Tian amazes us daily with his ASL and spoken English skills. He loves us to read books and doesn't care if we sign ASL or read aloud in English. He'll pay close attention either way. Tian is completely on-track with his peers and will do great in pre-k in the fall! We just gotta work on his "obeying" skills. At home and at school, he often thinks it's cute and/or funny to disobey, then produce a huge ear-to-ear grin.
Travis will be moving on to Kindergarten in the fall! Ken and I were prepared to keep him in pre-k one more year due to his language delay, but the teacher and counselor feel that he can move on to Kindergarten since he is academically ready. Travis is counting, identifying letters and numbers, writing letters, sequencing, and all the other things kids need to be doing to be ready for K. He comprehends ASL signed to him, but still struggles when it comes to his expressive language.
The counselor let us know that he would likely begin expressing more over the summer, then the structure (on which he thrives) and nature of Kindergarten would draw it out even more. Sure enough, Travis expressive language has grown my leaps just over the past few weeks. In the days leading up to his birthday, we talked about his birthday, counted down the days, packed the door prizes, and named his friends who would be attending. That single event motivated him to talk about future events more than he ever had before; they also led to him telling about past events. Once the party was over, he continued to talk about it for days. Monday morning, he told his teacher all about the party. That in itself was huge process.
Over the summer, we are doing a lot of reading, then having Travis (Tian, too) re-tell the story. I'm still editing a video that I'll post soon. I made a set of sight word cards and we plan to label everything in the house so that Travis can start identifying basic words or at least understand that the words mean something.
I'm SUPER excited about the teacher Travis might possibly have next fall, but don't know the details definitively, so I'll save posting about that for later.
Also on the school front is news about TJ. I'll save that for the next post....
How exciting! I look forward to seeing your boys' ASL storytelling videos.
ReplyDeleteAlso praying for a solution to TJ's dysgraphia