Preschool with the Littles

Shortly after we got home from our massive trek westward we started up school again.  I try to do a little preschool with the Littles while the Bigs are working too.  I got out the Model Magic when we were learning about the letter B so they could make a letter B for themselves. 

You know Sawyer’s concentrating when he’s got his tongue out. 

Grace is not a huge fan of getting her hands dirty or touching strange things.  She didn’t really get into this. 

Emily, however, LOVED it!

I finally took charge of Grace’s blob and made a snake for her to continue rolling.  She was OK with that. 

Next up was stringing beads on pipe cleaners to make some bracelets. 

There he goes concentrating again!

(When taking a picture, focus points make a difference!)

Another preschool favorite is the dot markers.  

And then before we knew it, it was the first day of school through the school district for Emily.  She was able to go for about 4-5 weeks at the end of the previous school year when we moved to Melissa so she was automatically enrolled for the following year.  She looks a little apprehensive here, but I assure you she was NOT.

This picture really shows how teeny tiny she is!  That backpack is bigger than she is!

We got her settled inside and talked with her teachers and she got right to work.

We had high hopes of speech therapy and other therapies being provided on a regular basis through the school district.  Those were not realized though.  We had started private speech therapy during the summer before our vacation and that was showing great results while she was getting no therapies whatsoever at school.  I don’t have anything bad to say about the Melissa School District.  Her teachers there were kind and helpful and loved her very much.  I think that with being such a small school district without a lot of resources, the school district was just not prepared to provide all the therapies Emily needs.  We ultimately made the decision, after about 8 weeks of trying it out, to pull Emily out of school too.  We really felt that the time she spent at school would be better spent at home with me actually practicing her speech with her.  Her being at school did give me a little break, but it also really got in the way of what we could do as a family with homeschool trips and stuff so it just wasn’t worth it.  She was also starting to display some behavioral problems at school, and I think she just really needs some more time to figure out how families work and that we’re her main caregivers before we ship her off to several different caregivers for even a short period of time each day.  I really think it was confusing to her.  We’ve kept her in private speech therapy and we continue to work on that at home.  She has done much better since we pulled her out.  I’m not exactly sure what we’ll do when the time for kindergarten rolls around.  We’ll make that decision when the time comes.