Saturday, May 7, 2011

Preschool, and the age of curiosity...

Jack is at such a fun age.  His brain is constantly working about 6 trillion miles a minute, and so is his mouth.  I am not exaggerating in the slightest when I say that he asks ATLEAST 200 questions a day. This morning I recorded about 2 minutes worth of conversation between us. And for the record, I answer EVERY one of his questions.

These are the things that came out of his mouth...

Mom, what's your tongue? what's it do?
Mom, what's your throat for?
Mom, what's your stomach for?
Mom, does Uncle Max ride a horse all the time? (not sure where that one came from)
What does a horse eat?
Mom, what does a stag beetle eat?
What does a praying mantis eat? Can I touch one?
What does a Hercules beetle eat? Can I touch one? (Jack is really interested in bugs and spiders lately...we spend a lot of time at the library looking at nature books)
Mom, do tarantulas molt? Do we molt?
Mom, what's the Vinegaroon eat? (vinegaroons are like scorpions
Mom, what does the wind do?
Mom, what's the rain for?
...as I'm starting to get a little distracted, he puts his hands on my cheeks and pulls me toward his face "Mom, mom, look at me in my face, talk to me at my face!"

And then it keeps going, and going, and going.

This kid is hilarious...exhausting, but hilarious.

****
In other news, Jack recently started preschool!!  There is a little bit of a back story, so here it is...

Last September a friend commented that Jack might benefit from a headstart preschool program due to some of his social and behavioral delays. 

Delays? What delays? Isn't my child perfect? :)

  I wasn't offended by her opinion, but it got me curious as to why she would make a statement like that.  I made Jack an appointment to be evaluated...I mean, it's not like I had anything to lose, right?!?  To my surprise, they passed him though to the next round, and then the next of evaluations. (This was a process that took several months.)

  The evaluations were very enlightening.  It was a great for me to see exactly where he should be, and areas where he was excelling or falling short.

In the end, the conclusion was made that Jack is a VERY bright child (you can tell by his vocabulary in the above conversation), but there are certain mental processes that seem to have small glitches...namely his ability to sequence {even with things like numbers and letters}.  And when his mental processes aren't clicking like normal, it tends to make him lose focus and get frustrated. 

After all the evaluations (and LOTS of paperwork), he was accepted into the program and then started right up.  He goes 4 days a week, and has a bus pick up and drop him off at our doorstep...Oh, and it's totally free. Yeah, not complaining about that.  He is in a class with 10 kids and 2 {fabulous} teachers, then meets one on one with 3 different specialists...a speech therapist, occupational therapist, and behavioral specialist. 

He LOVES riding the bus...


On the first day, I walked him down the drive way, then got on the bus with him to make sure he was situated, and the little turkey says "Mom, get off the bus...this bus is NOT for moms" Oh brother, I didn't realize kids could already be embarrassed of their parents at age 4 :) heehee


One of the major highlights of starting school was the Spiderman backpack.   He is SUPER cool.


Surprisingly, it's been a hard adjustment for Bianca.  She and Jack are quite close and for the first few days, she sobbed and sobbed when the bus picked him up.  As you can see, her heart break didn't last long...now she loves to sit on the front steps and wait for the bus.  It's pretty sweet. 


We couldn't be more happy with the way things are working out.  He has only been going to preschool for a 6 weeks, and we are already seeing huge improvements.  His teachers and specialists are confident that by the time he goes to kindergarten, he will have no problems fitting right in. 


And I'm not hatin' the three hours a day that I get with just my sweet girls either.  I forgot how easy it was to go places with only two in tow :)