So first, core strength/fine motor:
Our DD (4 in December) seems to have trouble sitting and she is getting extremely tired when doing so. When they have to sit in a circle at school she bends over, twists, lays down ect. She pays attention and said she is really really trying to sit but she gets so so tired.
You've received wonderful advice above already. I don't have anything really different to add, but fwiw my older dd had low muscle tone in her trunk when she was young, and she also had trouble sitting, loved to ben over, twist, lay down etc when she was supposed to be sitting (in circle) or was always jumping up and moving off her chair at the table (when she wasn't falling out of the chair). She went through physical therapy, and had "homework" of swinging for at least 20 minutes a day or whenever she could (we also had her swing when she became anxious). She loved to swing, and it really helped with the trunk muscle weakness. Having her sit on a ball rather than a chair, or on one of the knobby-looking sensory cushion that has air in it also really helped her stay on her chair.
Re the fine motor - our dd didn't really have fine motor issues but had what *looked* like fine motor issues - her handwriting was so sloppy that it rivaled our dysgraphic's handwriting in early elementary and she was just generally very klutzy with fine-motor (as well as gross-motor) activities. In her case, that all turned out to be related to an undiagnosed vision issue, as well as a good portion of the falling off her chair and not wanting to sit still etc. She really did have low muscle tone in her trunk, but she also had vision issues playing into it. Same thing happened with another young child we knew who was slow to develop gross motor skills... turns out it was due to vision. So... just thought if you hadn't considered vision that might be something else you'd want to look into.
TOEFL:
Apparently DD's fine motor is preventing a grade skip so they are saying she is not in either grade because she doesn't really fit in either grade (montessori so it doesn't really matter anyway). But they asked if they could give her a TOEFL reading test to help them gage where she is reading-level wise because they were having a hard time figuring it out. I said ok, but just curious, what is this test? How do they test the 4yo's using this?
I'm wondering if you have the correct test acronym? The "TOEFL" I've heard of is "Test of English as a Foreign Language" (or something like that) and is a test for adults. There is a test that is commonly given to young children to assess writing skills called the "TOWL" (Test of Written Language) and I *think* there is a similar test for reading - but can't remember the exact acronym for it.
No matter what the acronym, you can always ask the school staff for details on the test, what type of questions there are, what it assesses, and how to interpret your dd's results. Let us know how it goes!
polarbear
