Introduction To My Workbook Wednesday

Wednesday (or any day of the week that we find some extra time) is hereby declared Workbook Wednesday in our kingdom!

Here is the situation - my oldest son is currently enrolled in a special education preschool who unfortunately at our last CPSE meeting was declined services for the summer. On one hand I can say, it is great that they feel he has improved and does not need services year round any more but on the other hand, I can say due to budget cuts only children with a firm diagnosis will be maintaining services through the summer - see you in September. Either way, we are on our own!

My son, although he tests very high for his age has some issues with attention, hyper-activity, social situations, fine motor skills, oral motor weakness and language skills along with a long list of sensory issues. He has not been officially diagnosed but is scheduled for an ADOS late this spring. Originally we assumed we were looking at ADHD but his neurologist feels that he most likely falls somewhere on the spectrum and is leaning towards Asperger's . Label or no label, he is having a lot of trouble learning his letters and numbers despite his ability to narrate whole movies verbatim. I guess it is not that interesting to him at this time.

My idea - I realize that a lot of things have changed since I went to Kindergarten, 30 years ago and that kids today are expected to know so much more but I keep remembering a notebook that we had to work in every night for homework. Each night was a different topic such as a color or letter for which I had to search through my mom's old Family Circle and Woman's Day magazines searching for something "red" or that started with the letter "A", then I had to cut and paste on the appropriate page. I am not sure if this will work for my son but I figured the flipping through the pages with me may help his attention and communication, the cutting and pasting will help with his fine motor skills and the actual pictures will help with his association and recognition of basic concepts and letter recognition as he seems to need all his senses involved in his learning.

My goal - To have my son placed in a main-stream kindergarten class without a SEIT or shadow and holding his own (and doing well at it too without him losing any of his confidence that he seems to have so little of.