With Simon turning 5 not even a week before the cutoff for kindergarten, we had a hard decision to make--whether or not to send him this year or wait. After talking with his daycare teachers, his occupational therapist and thinking long and hard, we decided to wait the year. With his sensory processing issues, we were concerned that he would be way overstimulated by 20+ kids and one teacher in a classroom. He is also still catching up with some of his fine motor skills, and still struggles to self-regulate in a chaotic atmosphere. So why not give him an extra year, and make sure he gets the best start to school that he can?
Once we decided to hold off on kindergarten, we quickly made the decision to look for a new school for the year. As much as we have appreciated the boys' experiences at ELDC, we wanted to find him something new rather than just have him spend another year in the oldest classroom. We found a school called Young Child Academy down closer to downtown, right near the Space Needle, and it has a Pre-K 2 room. It's for 5 year olds who attend full time only, and it has a max of 10 kids and 1 teacher. So we enrolled him and he started the day after Labor Day weekend. And...so far so good!
His teacher is Sarah and there are 7 kids in the room at this point, Their schedule and activities feel more like kindergarten than pre-k--they have their own handwriting books, they do a lot with letters and numbers and even spend time every day learning Spanish! They focus on a letter each week, and the kids are encouraged to bring an item from home that starts with that letter. And once a month, each child has a sharing day, where they can bring something special from home to share with the class. Simon's day is this coming Tuesday, and he can't wait to bring a Transformer (surprise surprise!)
One of my favorite things about the new routine is that he has a notebook, and each day we get some notes from Sarah about his day, plus there is usually a drawing from Simon. Tomorrow I'll post a bunch of the daily "reports", they are really special. He also brought home an amazing book that he made, called "A Book About Me!" I'll share that soon too.
Overall, we have been really happy so far, and Simon has adapted wonderfully. Our understanding is that he has been pretty relaxed and happy, with significantly less reported trouble with acting out and struggling to self-regulate. We think it's the small class plus just a new environment, and we couldn't be happier about his start at YCA.
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