Great First Week of School!

We started back to school last Monday - almost two weeks already!

Demi was VERY ready to go to First Grade. She was excited to tell anyone who would listen.

The first day was exciting for me because she came home with a phrase ("No Homework") written in her papers - and it was legible! She also had a list of spelling words (granted, very easy ones) - only five - that she already knew.

Her special ed teacher (same as last year) was gushing over how much better she was reading now. She has definitely come a long way since last year - but I guess that's true for all "normal" kids. Since Demi's not exactly "normal", it's just amazing to me that she's pretty much at the same level as her peers (just not as independent).

This second week of school has been a little more difficult (90 mins to do her homework on Monday!), but she seems to be getting the concepts in order to keep up. It just takes A LOT of repetition. Her reading is going very well. Math, not so well. Writing, despite the first day excitement, is also going slowly.

In therapy over the summer, her OT has been doing a lot of vestibular stimulation (spinning, crawling with a tennis ball, other exercises). It can sometimes positively impact writing and small motor skills.

We also made a change to her glasses which will hopefully help with the vision issues she seemed to be having last year.

Her speech is gradually becoming clearer, although she still has a long way to go. I would guess that people outside her regular sphere could understand 50% of what she's saying on the first try. Probably 80-90% after asking her to repeat it a few times.

She still takes her supplements every day. Over the summer, I got a bit slack at times (typically when traveling). I noticed behavior changes when she was off them for more than a few days. The changes were mostly decreased attention/increased distractability.