First Day of SCHOOL!!!

Hard for me to believe that my little munchkin is old enough to start school, but given she just had her third birthday, it must be true. We had to say goodbye to all her Early Childhood Intervention (ECI) therapists last week as it was the last time she would see them for therapy. It was bittersweet, as are most times of change, but it was nice that she got to see most of them that day to say goodbye. I can't thank her therapists (the ones she said goodbye to last week and all the others that she has worked with in these last few years) enough for all the support and guidance they have provided while helping Emma and I be the best team we can be.

The process for starting school is definitely one to mention, as the team of people we worked with did a wonderful job with helping make it a smooth transition! Emma met with and completed assessments with a diagnostician, occupational therapist, physical therapist, speech therapist, orientation and mobility specialists, and her current Vision Impairment (VI) Teacher. I was able to tour two different campuses (one of which I attended personally) and see two different classroom options to decide which option would be the best placement for Emma. After much deliberation and several discussions with the diagnostician about the options, we decided the Functional Life Skills (FLS) classroom was the best choice for Emma. The student to teacher ratio was much better,  as well as the equipment they had readily available for daily use while at school.

After the decision was made, Emma and I made a visit to her future classroom so she could meet the teachers and they could meet her. Her primary teacher asked if it would be possible to come by our house and get to know her even better in her own environment to start learning her likes and dislikes as well as what motivates her. Thrilled with the enthusiasm of her teacher, we gladly had her over. It was so nice to start to develop that bond you have with your child's teacher and have that sense of trust and respect before Emma even started attending school. It really made the idea of my little munchkin not being so little anymore much easier to swallow, even if I did choke back some tears when I dropped her off this morning for her first day of class.

Playing with Elmo and her new teacher!

And, as no surprise to me, Emma had a wonderful first day! Her teacher sent me pictures of her interacting with so many new toys and textures - some more enthusiastically than others of course. Elmo was there with her, but she also found something new that she was interested in - a slinky! She was assigned locker number seven, which I told the teachers was quite fitting, since that was both her birthday and mine. On Thursday, she'll have her new backpack to carry her notebook back and forth to school. She would have had one today, but I didn't think she'd be having homework so soon! (No homework, it's just a way for her teacher and I to communicate about how things are going. But I had to make the joke!)