I have been meaning to post about the Adeline and Lila's conferences. It has been so busy and with all my time spent in the car picking up and dropping off, that I rarely find myself in front of the computer. If only my Blackberry was user friendly in the blogging world.
I will start with Lila.
Lila is in a class with 15 children and two teachers. She is the youngest with the exception of her good friend Vincent who just turned three on Wednesday. Many of the children started this year at 3.5 years old. That being said, Lila is three and expected to meet the challenges of a three year old classroom. Her teacher knows me well. She was Savannah's teacher and played an important role in embracing our family while the twins were fighting for life in the NICU. We both had the feeling of "full circle" when sitting down for Lila's conference.
Lila is doing very well at school. She is very social, plays nicely, and is one of the MOST attentive student during circle time. I was surprised to hear that she hasn't engaged in any negative behavior like fighting over toys or not sharing because she can get into some pretty loud tiffs at home. Mrs. Jones indicated that she was right on target for the social/emotional domain. Although her articulation makes it hard to understand her, she always engages with others during free play and plays nice! It is so strange to have a very social child after agonizing over Savannah's painfully shy road in this same class three years ago.
With regard to receptive and expressive language, Lila was given satisfactory for her age. She communicates her needs, participates in music, and is very involved in finger plays and stories. However, she is still on the low end of the language curve. Conversations are beginning to emerge but going back and forth with Lila is still difficult. It is hard to know if she doesn't understand what you are saying or if it is just expressive language immaturity and her not realizing the format of a conversation.
Cognitively, Mrs. Jones doesn't have any concerns for Lila. She considers her a young three and assessed her accordingly. I still have concerns and most of them stem from the above conversation piece. I feel that there should be much more dialog in her life as well as the ability to retell about a past event. Again, it is emerging but when compared to other students in her class, she falls behind. Only time will tell if it has a cognition link.
Finally, Lila's motor skills were all satisfactory except for her crayon grasp. Since the conference that has been rectified which puts me at ease. Savannah really struggled with her pencil grasp which carried over into the 4's class. I am glad that Lila has avoided this.
All in all, I am thrilled with Lila's report. I knew that she was very young going into the three's class. Not only that, Brandywine is a very rigorous and academic preschool. There is little to no unstructured time which is very different from many other preschools I know. I worried that Lila Grace wouldn't be able to hang, but hang she does. She loves school and the few times I have peeked in on her, she is following directions and very attentive. In fact, Mrs. Jones said that she ALWAYS follows directions. Lila has taken to her assistant teacher Mrs. Pezick, the only one that calls her Lila Grace, and is viewed as a sweet and quiet student that always uses her manners.
I hope that she continues to thrive at Brandywine. It is going to get much more academic next year which will really start to paint the picture of Lila and how she will do in a school age classroom.
As if I haven't said it a hundred times before. . . never in a million years did I think Lila Grace would be a typical, thriving three year old while I sat watching over her isolette a mere three years ago.
