Special Olympics ~ Basketball

Little Bitty's class gets to participate in various Special Olympics events during the year... a couple of weeks ago was the first one of the school year - basketball :).

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Two weeks in...

School started two weeks ago.

First day of 2nd grade:

First day of 6th grade (middle school!):

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Two weeks in, we are slowly getting into a new routine. Bearhug and Cuddlebug seem to be adjusting well to middle school overall. It's a challenge with so much being new - the school itself, lockers, separate teachers for each subject, electives, etc. and it's a lot to keep track of, but I'm really proud of how well they're doing.

We requested that they be in the same classes as much as possible, and they ended up being scheduled for all the same classes, which is great at least for this year. They've been in separate classes before but have been together for the last two school years and they work well together. They have enough changes going on this year without adding being separated for much of the day on top of everything else. And let's be honest, it also helps us to keep track of homework assignments, projects, etc. when they have the same teachers :).

Both of the boys decided to join the orchestra at school. They each chose to play the cello. I'm really excited for them and hope they enjoy it. Both dh and I played music growing up and hope it will be a good experience for them. They get to start with instruments tomorrow :).


Bitty is doing well so far at school, and he's been great about getting up and ready in the morning. He still complains about going to school every day though :(. His teacher said he is doing well. She said she's been pacing his academic work to parallel the general ed class and he's keeping up just fine so that is good. However, during the time that he actually *goes* to the general ed class, there are a couple of areas where he's struggling and it sounds like it's more in terms of the approach being different. So we may need to adjust his IEP. Already. We're going to talk about it this week. Hopefully whatever changes we make will help him feel better about school...

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Here is some of what the boys brought home their first week of school:

Bitty's class worked on how to draw cats (which I'm sure he LOVED!). He adores cats. And as you may recall, one of his first drawings from a couple of years ago was of a cat. :)

Bearhug and Cuddlebug were each asked to fill out a "getting to know you" questionnaire. Here's an excerpt from each.

Cuddlebug:
#4 made me laugh as he clearly demonstrates his point, and his answer to #15 is just so sweet! :)

Bearhug:
love how he states the obvious in #4, and his reply to #7 is just so... him :)

The questionnaire was two pages long and the last question from the teacher was "do you have any questions for me?" so this was Bearhug's response (LOL):

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The graduates

Cue Alice Cooper, because as of a couple of weeks ago, it's official... school's out.

Two of my babies have graduated from 5th grade, bringing their elementary school days to a close.

I can't believe they are growing up so fast, but I am SO proud of them!





They each earned awards for being on the A/B honor roll all year, and all through elementary school. Awesome job, guys!!

On the last day of school, I took the day off so we could go to their 5th grade graduation, and later that day was Bitty's end-of-year class party.



His class is fairly small (it's a self-contained ASD class) so the teacher let each of the kids get up to read a poem that they've been working on.

Here is Bitty's poem, I love it!

And the drawing (of himself) that he did with it:



After we got home that day, Bitty celebrated the beginning of summer with - what else - Angry Birds :).



He's been getting more creative and building "structures" for the pigs. We put them on a blanket so it wouldn't be so loud when the birds knocked the structures down (dh was taking a nap).



"Level complete!"

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On IEP's, speech, and girls

So last month we had the IEP meetings for Cuddlebug and Bearhug to set up their transition-to-middle-school IEPs. The ASD resource teacher from the middle school was there, which was great because we were able to get a lot of our questions answered as to how things work in middle school, both in general and specific to the autism program. I am feeling a little better about the whole thing now that we have *some* idea of what to expect.

This week there is a field trip for the 5th graders to visit the middle school, and also an informational meeting for parents.

While they will have an open house in the fall, the resource teacher said she is happy to set up a separate time for her students to come when it will be quiet so they can take their time to get familiar with where everything is without the huge crowd. That is AWESOME, and we will definitely be taking her up on that!

One of their electives will be a social skills class, which also includes spending some time tutoring kindergartners at the elementary school which is connected to the middle school. I think that will be a great experience for them (and who knows, may even help them develop a little more patience for their little brother... a mom can hope, right?). The teacher said that both her students and the kindergartners really enjoy it, and it's a great learning experience all around.

And... (drumroll please)... Cuddlebug and Bearhug have now officially "graduated" from speech therapy. :) There are still some articulation issues but it's either things that they physically can't help or they know how to make the right sounds in a therapy environment and it's just a matter of remembering to do it in conversational speech which is something we can work on at home. When I told the boys about that they were pretty happy, poor Cuddlebug seemed really relieved. He seemed to like it more when he was younger but not so much anymore... I felt bad when he told me, "a lot of other kids finished speech a lot sooner than me and 'Bearhug.'" He's never said anything like that before so I didn't realize he was noticing (although I guess I shouldn't be surprised, he notices everything). I just told him it's different for everyone depending on what they're working on, and that's ok. I also told him how proud I am of both of them because I know how hard they have worked in speech as well as at school.

His current resource teacher told us they've been talking to the 5th graders about middle school, and letting them share what they are nervous about and excited about regarding middle school.

On both of their lists (both boys and both nervous and excited about) was "having a girlfriend."

Oh my.

Which reminds me of a recent conversation we had in the car.

Cuddlebug: "We're starting to be interested in girls."

me: ('wha?!?!' on the inside, cool as a cucumber on the outside or at least I think so) "Really?"

Bearhug: "Yeah, or at least the girls are starting to be interested in us."

(Now that I already knew, but I didn't realize that THEY knew it yet)

me: "How do you know?"

Bearhug: "A girl gave me a love letter."

me: (still cool on the outside, crying incoherently about how my baby isn't old enough for this stuff yet on the inside) "A love letter? What did it say?"

Bearhug: (totally nonchalant about the whole thing of course) "It said, 'I love you.'"

me: "Wow... what did you say?"

Bearhug: "I didn't respond."

me: (ok, now I'm starting to feel sorry for the poor girl) "umm... you know she had to be pretty brave to give you that. You don't have to say it back, but you should say *something*"

Bearhug: "Oh, I did say something."

(pause to see if he was going to continue but he didn't)

me: "What did you say?"

Bearhug: "I said, 'Aren't we a little young for that?'"


That's my boy ;).

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IEP season is off to a rough start

Last Friday we had Bitty's IEP meeting. Seems like we just had one (oh wait, we did), although that was just an IEP review to update his placement to one that would be more effective for him. We didn't update any of his goals at the time.

So this was his regular IEP to update goals for the upcoming year.

I have always had mixed feelings about IEP meetings... on the one hand, it tends to be a bit of a reality check on where my kids are developmentally, relative to their peers. Since I don't really have that much experience with children other than my own, it can be easy sometimes to get into the "this is our normal" groove and not really think about it that much until there it is, all spelled out.

The upside though, is that the IEP meeting also generally serves as an opportunity to see just how much progress they have made over the last year. For the most part my boys have always mastered at least most of the their goals by the time the IEP year has passed, and while we might carry over a few that they are still working on, the rest are either replaced with new ones or stretched / expanded to the next level.

Until now.

We reviewed the measurements of how Bitty is doing on his current goals, and my heart sank a bit when I saw he was still struggling with most of them. I mean, I know he's had a challenging year but I guess I wasn't quite mentally prepared for that.

Then we started going through his goals for this year's IEP. I actually felt tears welling up (and I don't cry that easily) when I realized we'd been through several and the only change we'd made so far was to lower his reading level in order to (hopefully) help with his reading comprehension. He is hyperlexic (pretty much taught himself to read at an early age and reads beyond his grade level) but still struggles to answer even the most basic questions about what he's read (who, what, where, why, when), even when given the opportunity to look in the book for the answers. He has a visual chart for the "W" questions that shows what kind of question is being asked, and that helps a little but it still takes a lot of prompting.

So that's how it went. For the most part, his goals for 2nd grade will be the same as they were for 1st grade. The notable exception being his handwriting - he still has issues with pencil grip and hand strength but you really wouldn't know it to see his handwriting, it's quite good. We just need to keep working on it so that as he starts having to write more, his hand won't get tired too fast.

The main reason for his difficulty on the rest of his goals still comes back to the language delays, which impacts pretty much everything. His speech / articulation has improved considerably, and his memory is pretty phenomenal so he can recite entire episodes of his favorite shows. He has a pretty good handle on the typical day-to-day interactions (through much practice, and still with a fair amount of effort). But anything new or out of the routine that requires language (receptive or expressive) is such a challenge for him. And educational learning, by definition, tends to be a lot of new information (with some review of course).

It's really hard to see him struggle so much, but I'm so proud of him because no matter how hard it is, he keeps trying and with a positive attitude. Everyone who works with him comments on what a joy he is to be around (seriously they do, that's not just me being biased!) :).

Next up (later this spring) will be the IEP's for Cuddlebug and Bearhug. The ones that will transition them to middle school (ack!). I'm open to suggestions if there are things you think we should consider or make sure to include.

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School / IEP update for Bitty

A while back I posted about some of the difficulties Bitty has been having in school.

Shortly before Thanksgiving, we had a meeting with the school to review his IEP and discuss changes to help better meet his needs. We learned that he was basically requiring almost constant one-on-one support from the resource teacher / parapros in his class which isn't really what they are set up to do. The challenge comes down to communication - if the subject is straightforward and doesn't require much verbal explanation he does great. Spelling, for example. He is a spelling kung fu master :). On the other hand, any subjects or new topics that require verbal explanation are quite difficult, not because he can't understand the subject matter, but because he struggles with language. He's a fast learner and that has helped him to keep up as well as he has, but the whole situation was really stressing him out because he recognized that most of his classmates did not share his struggle to understand what was being said, or what was being asked when the teacher would ask questions.

His teachers suggested he might do better in a smaller class setting, at least for the core subjects, and we agreed to put him in a self-contained ASD class for part of the day (almost half the day when you add up the hours) for math, reading, and writing. For the rest of the subjects he is still in his regular ed class with resource support. It's a much smaller class where all the kids have similar issues and the teachers have the flexibility to tailor to the kids' pace and individual needs much more than in the larger classroom. They also do activities like morning yoga since the physical activity helps the kids focus for learning (honestly, I think all kids would probably benefit from something like that, not just kids on the spectrum). We'll reassess later this year when we update his IEP for next year.

He started in his new class after the Thanksgiving break and so far it is really working out well. His anxiety level is considerably less, he no longer cries about having to go to school and he is doing well academically. He's back to getting all 1's on his daily reports (they have a scale from 1-4 for how he does at staying on task and following instructions with minimal reminders, etc.). It's been hard to see him struggle so much, and although I wish it wasn't so hard for him I'm grateful he's getting the support he needs and relieved that he's back to feeling positive about school.

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