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Gosh that sounds awful - both the repeating and the silently! My DS preschool is considered very academic but DS would be more frustrated in a play based unless it was a gifted play based because he actually enjoys doing all the crafts and sheets and has more difficulties negotiating the social stuff since he wants more advanced imaginary play.


DeHe

That sounds awful! My DD is in an academic school but her's is more in line with DeHe's description.

Flower: There has been talk on this board about the Reggie system. You might want to search for it. From what I remember there are a few people on here that have had their children attend and were happy with the program.

We had our first lesson from the house. It did not go well. The poor guy had three strikes before coming into the door. 1. DD was mad at me because I wouldn't give in to her plea for popcorn. 2. The lesson is the first time DD has had anything from the house. 3. He is male and DD tends to get silly around male instructors. I stayed out of the way but heard all of it. She was definitely not cooperating, but there were a few moments of hope. She shocked him when she read the notes from the sheet music and when he asked her how she knew that her response was "because I'm 4." Four is her magical number. She associates it with big girl and the ability to do anything. The nice thing is I found a stash of her piano lessons at school (which was suppose to be given to me) and with the lessons were comments from her previous teacher. It included how fast she picked it up; how talented she is; and the amazing attention span. All great evidence to give to her new piano teacher. I gave him an out given the dreadful lesson but he wanted to continue. He said he sees her potential and also can tell that she is extremely intelligent. So I had a little talk with her and hopefully this next week she will settle down and not waste his time. If it continues the way it did the other day we will have to look for sessions in someone's studio. Crossing my fingers!

http://i945.photobucket.com/albums/ad296/Hablame_today/64c6ff3f.jpg here's a picture of me drilling the multiplication tables into my kid. I'm using maria's math mammoth youtube method to drill math facts, where he reads the # line forward then backwards and then reads the equations forward then backwards. I guess L8r he'll memorize them. But first let's read through them all once. �Oh mr. smartypants erased the #3 from two of the equations, but then read them backwards and forwards as if the 3's were still there. He just got exposed to this, so it's kind of cool he noticed and memorized one piece, even if it was the easy part. I don't know why I'm bragging but he's reading his first little easy equations for the first time ever.

Katelyn'sM_om, how are the piano lessons going now? We are going to try them this month, along with drums and voice. Woo hoo! I think I might take lessons along with her

You should. I've learned a lot just from listening to the lessons. I've even taught myself the scales. <<Patting myself on back>> Especially since I have never had lessons before.

Yes, go for it!

I'm watching the drumming video while the boy learns. Who knew there was sheet music for a rockstar drummer? .

Update:

We started a new preschool in a new town for DS3.5, we are in a real city for a while. It's basically been going great, it is non-academic which is perfect. Kids are 3-5, most of the kids are older than him and somehow it's still okay he's not fully potty trained. There is lots to do and a bunch of the kids are very bright. I think overall it's going to be really good for DS, the play based structure of it is great, his main need is social and he's doing really well at this place in that regard. Someone snatched a toy from him today and he didn't lose it, just calmly followed the kid around reasonably politely asking for it back until a adult noticed and intervened. Yay for little successes.

So far the only thing that isn't working too well is circle time which is at the end. They split the large group into two smaller groups. DS has been started out with the younger half (as he is in that age group), who do short jump up and down type songs and listen to short books. The first day went great, but after that not so much. More and more he is off wandering away, even if I sit with him (parents are encouraged to go). I totally understand his impatience: the fingerplays are meaningless mumbo jumbo and the stories are baby stuff, and repetitive is repetitive rather than comforting. It's also at the end which means it's time to go home or somewhere else.

Today it was so dull we snuck out and joined the older group. Their activity was playing bingo with beginning letter sounds. The bingo idea was interesting to DS as he's played some bingo type games, but the letter sounds is old hat and there was a lot of time between calling each one out as the teacher has to explain to the other kids that no that's a h not a n, etc. It was going to take 15 minutes for anyone to get a bingo (and all these 4 year olds are amazingly sitting there patiently!). Because of the interval DS doesn't notice when the teacher calls a new letter. In the end DS isn't really ready for a sit down game in a group setting. He started well putting a couple tokens down on his card, but then put another kid's token on his card for him (on DSs favorite word rather than a called-out word), he very loudly read the fine print teacher's instructions off her cards while she was speaking, he lay down and swam on the ground after the fff sound word was fish, he took all his tokens and made kind of a cool picture with them, and finally politely said he was done and left. It would be fine if he was not a distraction to the others but his social maturity is 3 all the way and he might well be in the way even if I was there.

There's no real alternative for kids who can't hack the group time as there is no one supervising the other areas, everyone is supposed to go to group time.

Okay so to get to the point, the director (who seems great) noticed that group time isn't the easiest and asked me if I had any ideas for how to accomodate for him (especially if it were in the younger group). I said, "read some really long books". Which wasn't that helpful.

Any ideas? My current idea is just to pick him up a little early and skip group time altogether.

Polly

If circle time is the only thing that doesn't seem to work for him AND he appears to be in the middle of the two options than I would probably just pick him up early.

So thankfully I was able to switch my dd (4 in March) from her loving and perfectly fine (for the majority of kids) church pre-k to the Montessori where my older 2 are and where I also am teaching Spanish part-time. (The cost was prohibitive for the first part of the year, I was able to work out a solution finally). While she *seemed* content at the other school, it is clear that Montessori and a multi-age classroom (at least for now where she is youngest) will be a good fit for her. I think her teacher is not a die-hard Montessorian and will be flexible about allowing her to progress. It has also been good to have additional feedback that she is indeed not typical in her development. Hoping the rest of the year goes as well as her first week!