Most of you know that Abby has had speech delays in her short 3 years. To give you a better picture of her struggle for words, a year ago (at age of 24 months) she barely had 10 muttered words to her vocabulary. Fortunately though, for the last year she has been receiving speech therapy 3x week with a therapist that she has adored, Ms. Amy. She has made enormous strides and we are confident she will continue to make progress with her sounds, words and speaking in longer sentences.
Abby was recently evaluated in our local school district for Early Intervention Services (which is an agency that provides necessary education services to kids who are not school-age yet, 3 to 5 year-olds). As expected, Abby's challenges are with her language and articulation and her deficiencies in those areas qualify her for preschool special education services in our school district. Beginning this past week, she has started preschool where she attends the Communication Classroom at a nearby elementary school on Mondays & Tuesdays mornings for 2 hours each of those days. The class is made up of 8 students (almost all 3 year-olds), who all have a speech delay similar to Abby's. There is 1 special education teacher, 1 TA, 1 speech-language pathologist and her TA working with those 8 students. Talk about an unbelievable teacher-student ratio! Abby also now has an IEP (Individual Education Plan) which was written with specific goals for Abby to achieve this school year focused around her articulation & language use.
We are so happy that Abby will get additional opportunities to strengthen her language skills each week and throughout this school year. She will continue to go to private speech therapy 2x week. I would be remiss & lying if I didn't admit that Brian and I both had a moment when we second guessed ourselves about putting Abby in a special education class. We live in a cruel world where labels can unjustly define someone. But being Abby's biggest advocates & even bigger fans, we knew in our heart of hearts that having an opportunity like this with individualized attention in a classroom that is focused around sounds, articulation, pre-reading, socialization and making learning fun was for the best! Truthfully, this preschool has all the benefits of any other preschool class... except it has all those perks! We know that Abby is excited to go to "big girl school" and make new friends, play and learn even more.
We have been waiting for many, many months for her big day!
Getting ready to go to school with the big kids.
I actually drive Abby to school shortly after Thomas' bus comes and picks him up.
Ms. Tiffani shows Abby her very own cubby & hook for her things.
As I'm leaving...
Although there is a smile on my face with Marilyn, there is part of me that is just sad to not be with Abby. I know, I know... she is in great hands & is going to be learning even more... but I just can't help but miss Abby when she is not around.
Two hours later, we returned to find Abby finishing up circle time on the reading rug and putting her folder in her backpack as she got ready to leave. She was all smiles!
After nap/quiet time, her and I made & decorated cookies together to celebrate her big day!
Obviously, I let her be in charge!
Success!
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