September 10, 2007

Andy has been at his new school for two weeks now. He seems to be doing well. He gets there about an hour early for before-care and stays about two hours late for after-care. He seems to like his teacher and I can tell that he is already learning lots of new things - like how to "s-t-r-e-t-c-h out" words, which is how his teacher is showing the kids how to sound out words. He is also learning how to phonocize - a game they play to associate words with the first letter that they start with, while exercizing at the same time. Andy's homework each night will be to read with a parent and find the title, author, certain punctuation marks, etc.

Andy has art, music, PE, library and computer class. I think that he likes music the best so far - I think in large part because the teacher is fun. He fell off of the art stoll during class and two kids laughed at him - this upset him because he would have been concerned had it happened to them, rather than laugh.

All in all, I think this year will be a good one for him. He seems to get along with the kids in his class, but I am waiting for his strong friendship preferences to show.

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Nathan started in his new Natural History classroom one week ago. Evidently, he is quite a challenge to keep still and happy on the train commute each day. He cried when Gary dropped him off on the first 2 or 3 days, but seems to be settling in with the new routine. Gary says that the lead teacher is really good, so that should make for a good year for Nathan. Nathan is saying so many words now. He basically can repeat any short word you ask him to. His first 3 syllable word he said yesterday - animal. We were at the zoo and he keep saying it. Amazing to watch language development. Andy gets really excited when Nathan says words and is always working with Nathan to encourage his speaking.