Emily

I'm updating in reverse chronological order. :)

The start of the school year was REALLY hard on Emily. As you may remember, the class we had intended to put her in (a sort of developmental kindergarten class, for kids not quite ready for kindergarten) didn't have enough enrollment. The school canceled that class and opened two kindergarten classes instead, and Emily is now in kindergarten.

She was SO not ready for kindergarten.

Given that a little over a year before starting kindergarten, she was functioning at about the level of an 18-24 month old, it was a really big jump.

And she pretty much landed face first.

The first 3-4 weeks of school were horrible. We really thought we were going to have to pull her out and put her back in the preschool. She tested every boundary she could find with her new teacher. It didn't help that they didn't have any rest time during the day, and she was used to a 2-HOUR rest time at the preschool. She was defiant, refused to do her work, and was disruptive. Her teacher was very frustrated and I hated that Emily was causing problems for other students who are trying to learn.

Then all of a sudden...it clicked. Well, that's not entirely true. I made a mention to her teacher that Emily hates being left out. And all of a sudden, she had a discipline solution that worked. Any time Emily was being disruptive, she had to go back and sit at her desk, or on her rug, or wherever everyone else wasn't and she didn't get to participate.

She HATES not being in the middle of everything. She is a youngest, after all. :)

And all of a sudden she was cooperative in class, attempting her work, and following directions. She was a gem on her field trip. Last week, she didn't lose a clothespin all week which meant she got to pick a prize from the treasure box at the end of the week.

She's the first one of our kids to do that!!

She is still "not ready" for kindergarten. At our kids' school, they are reading by the end of kindergarten, and Emily's just not there yet. We fully anticipate her doing another year of kindergarten next year. But she is getting a lot of it, and she is loving being at big-girl school.

In other news, she's 34 lbs and has shot up several inches in the past year. She was literally in 18mo-2T clothing when we got home, and now some of the 4T pants are almost too short. Her English is better than the rest of the kids most of the time. :) She's a total ham who loves to sing and LOVES to talk. She has full conversations with herself when no one else will talk to her. Being the youngest, we hear a lot of "No, Emily!" "Don't touch that, Emily!" "You can't play with me, Emily!" and she's a pretty good pest. But she takes it all in stride and tends to be a very happy-go-lucky kid.