DS4 started special ed preschool on Monday and I am already seeing some interesting changes in him. He has always been the type of kid that just absorbs information ... from tv, computer, video games, me (very rarely) but never interested in an actual dedicated time for a sit down learning activity. But now, 3 days into preschool (2.5 hours a day) he gets home, relaxes a bit, tells me about his day, I ask if he had fun, he says "yes, a little bit", I ask did you play, he says "yes!" and tells me all about what he played with, I ask if he had learned anything, he says "no" ... just plain no. And I wasn't expecting him to learn since we put him in for learning to socialize and get used to being in a larger group of children.
But now, later in the day, he himself looks for learning activities. He has these magnetic numbers and suddenly he started using the numbers on a white board putting together addition problems and asking me if the results are correct. In two days he went from understanding / recognizing / using numbers to 20 with occasional mistakes ... to now recognizing any number to 100.
Until this week, I had him do a little bit on the ABCMouse website ... he could do any activity but had to get at least 20 reward "tickets" before I let him use other websites like the pbskids.org site. And normally he'd get off ABC mouse as soon as he got the 20 tickets. Now, he just tells me he wants to keep playing with ABCmouse and learn more.
So, I just wonder ... have your kids get this sudden urge to learn more when they entered preschool and weren't getting enough there? I am pretty sure part of what is going on with him is his new diet (Gluten free / casein free) that we started 4 weeks ago to see if it helps lessen his autistic traits (and it's been working wonders for both our boys). It just seems to have overall cleared both their little minds A LOT. But now I am not sure what to do? Just keep giving him more when he asks for more? I am not expecting for the school to challenge him because we put him intentionally with the less advanced group of kids so he can work on his fine motor and social skills ... so, do I need to keep him more challenged at home?
