Natalie at school

Today was a Friday off for Tom, and suddenly I realized right before Natalie got on the bus that since we weren't doing anything away from home, really, I could go to Natalie's school and observe while Tom stayed home with the boys.  So I did!  I'm sure the teachers think I'm checking up on them with unannounced visits when I just show up with no warning, but her main teacher has always said we can come at any time, and I usually don't decide to go until the last minute...and unannounced visits are always a good idea, anyway!

I hadn't observed the whole class time since last year (just an hour here or there during Tom's lunchtime), so it was great to be there the whole 2.5 hours and see how much Natalie has progressed, and to see how she's doing in comparison to the other kids.  We shouldn't, but we always do compare, and this time I saw a girl who is still behind in many ways, but is also actually keeping up in other ways.

Here's Natalie putting up her picture on the "school" board, which shows who is at school today.  Afterward, she went through and named all of the other pictures of her classmates (not something the teacher asked her to do, but Ms. Stacie permitted it).

During playtime, Natalie wants to play with her friends, but she's not comfortable with how fast they go on the scooter boards, so she follows on her own board.

When she needed to settle down during playground time, she built some blocks on the table.  Those blue blocks looked like they were balancing pretty precariously, but Natalie did it!

I'm so proud of her good pincer grasp during snack time!

Here's where she did the best during school: the teacher played a story and afterward they listened to animal sounds.  Natalie was the first to respond in her group with the name of the animal:  "lion!" "duck!" "dog!"   She often signs while she says animal names:  here I think she's signing lion.

Frogs say "ribbit!"

Natalie is stringing yarn through her craft mittens (not that we get any snow here!)

Before Natalie finished her craft, Miss Becky came for Natalie's individualized speech therapy.  Today for the first time, Miss Becky had Natalie invite Natalie's best friend, Ashley, to join her for speech.  They had a fun time together...Natalie is more talkative than Ashley, but Ashley has better articulation (and doesn't get individualized speech, I think, so she's not used to how an individual speech session goes.)  Our hope is that Natalie will develop more conversation with other children when she has speech therapy with one other child.

Natalie waiting nicely with her backpack to go home.  When the class left, Natalie left her place in line to come and hold my hand.  I was so pleased that for the most part I was not a distraction to her when I watched her class, but it was nice to go to the parking lot holding hands.