Sunday, August 31, 2003

Well, quite a big week here with both the boys starting their new schools. Timothy seems to enjoy kindergarten - says he likes the bus and gym class the best. He says he has to hold onto the seat on the bus or he flies off it, but also says he likes it because of the bumps. If he could only remember to put his half-drunk juice box in the trash instead of back in his lunchbox - I would be so happy! He's managed to bring home plenty of forms for me to fill out, which I call my homework. Several he had to "sign" - one saying he would behave himself on the bus and one saying he would only use the computers for what the teachers told him and not be emailing at will or using inappropriate language in any emails. Ah, how the times have changed.

All the classrooms at his school have eMacs in them, and there's also a computer lab. Each teacher has their own web page. His teacher (Ms. Booker) hasn't put anything up, but the other kindergarten teacher posted all the "sight words" that the kids should know before kindergarten is out. I think Timothy pretty much knows them all now. Next week is open house.

I met with Morgan's teacher on Friday to see how he is doing. There are 6 kids in his class, 4 "community models”, one other specials needs kid, and Morgan. There are 2 teachers, so one is basically with Morgan all the time. He has a special chair for circle time and a special chair for computer time. That seems to make him happy. She says he stops crying after 10 or 15 minutes when he gets there. He goes to the rest area between each activity - she calls it his safe place.

There is a lot of stuff they've done just for him. He has a little desk set up just for him to do activities on, and then there's this velcro board where she puts pictures of where she wants him to go next and he's supposed to take the picture with him and find the matching picture in the right area. After two days, he's starting to catch on and when Josh picked him up on Thursday, he went and got the "home" picture and put it on the velcro board. Anyway, Miss Dana seems very nice, though young, and the room is really cute.

Mom was down Friday over to Saturday and we did a little shopping and then yesterday cleaned up the study and moved the furniture around. I'm trying to get motivated to paint the mudroom today, but I can't decide what color I want to do. I'm going to pick one of the 20 colors of paint I have in the basement from other projects, but still can't decide which one. Also, want to do something fun - but since I'm artistically challenged, can't do a mural, so am thinking of putting letters and numbers around as I know Morgan would like that, or else labeling where things go like "hats and mittens" "coats" "shoes" etc, but then would have to repaint if I ever move stuff around. Maybe I should get decals. I wonder if I have any magnetic paint leftover from when I did their room.

Got some pictures rearranged and put away, and then put some leftovers in a small photo album for Morgan. He likes to look through pictures. I need to print more but my ink cartridge is empty and I don't have a spare. Figures!