Ollie Started Preschool on Monday

Ollie has been to preschool two days this week. He started on Monday and went again yesterday. He has every Wednesday off, and then he'll go back on Thursday and Friday of this week.

I'm super impressed with the program that he qualified for and with how quickly he was able to get into it. Because we had all our paperwork from England, including the IEP (individualized education program) the folks at his school there put together for him for speech/language and social therapies, he was sort of "fast-tracked" into the system here. Awesomeness. 

I handed over the papers early last week. Had a phone call with the director of the district-wide program late in the week, and found out that there was room for him right at Merrit's elementary school, starting immediately. One week, start to finish--from the time I turned in paperwork til his first day. Wow, I am so impressed.

This is going to be a great program for him. It's an integrated learning program, meaning that 2/3 of the kids in the class (12 in all) have some sort of developmental, learning, or communication delay and 1/3 of the kids in the class are developing on target. I'm sure most of you who read this blog know already that Ollie, at four-and-a-half, isn't talking as much as he should...and that's the reason he qualified for this program. 

Three special education teachers with 12 students. What a great ratio. An equipped classroom full of sensory, pictoral, and traditional learning materials. Signing and visual aid in addition to speech to help support communication. One-on-one speech therapy with a therapist once a week. Close to home--walking distance in fact. And because he qualifies for it, it's paid for with tax dollars. (We had expected to shuck out $200+ a month for preschool for Ollie--and that would have just been a kindergarten preparedness preschool...nothing like what he's getting now, and we would have still had to do speech therapy after school. This is awesome because it's all integrated and the ratio of qualified teachers to kids is totally impressive.)

I couldn't be happier for Ollie. I think he's going to thrive in his new environment. :)