Kindergarten Screening

I was so happy to see Sharon Cole when we arrived at Kindergarten screening on Wednesday. Grace went with her easily and I had time to explain a little bit about our concerns. Sharon was great, and told us what we anticipated. Grace is not ready for Kindergarten. Here were her strengths:
1. Cut with scissors.
2. Say her name and age.
3. Draw a circle, line, and plus sign.
4. Walk on a line, catch a ball, throw a ball, and jump on two feet.
5. Choose symbols that match, such as numbers and shapes. (She missed 184, because she chose the one with the 4 written backwards, but all of the others were correct.)
6. Count to eight. (This is all she would do for Sharon, but we have heard her count to 13.)

These are a few of things we need to work on:
1. Grace's address and telephone number
2. Identifying colors (Grace said all of them were yellow. Can you tell what we have been working on at home?)
3. Jumping on one foot.
4. Coloring a shape. (Grace tried, but only put a few marks in the shape.)
5. Identifying letters
6. Identifying numbers.
7. Counting to 25.
8. Follow directions so they can test vision and hearing. (She didn't understand and just smiled because she could hear sounds in the headset. When they asked her if she still heard the sound, she said, "All gone.") She needs to raise her hand when she can hear it.

I'm actually relieved that we have support from this screening for placing Gracie in pre-K. I have read several articles on Cumulative Cognitive Deficit and I don't want to advance her to quickly and have the deficiencies show up later on when her reading comprehension is affected. I think it will be better for her if she is successful and prepared for Kindergarten.

We met with the speech therapist at McGaughey, Ms. Born, on Friday to talk about our concerns. This domains meeting is required to test Grace for speech therapy. We are hoping that since she is just learning English she will qualify for some speech and language therapy during the next year. She also suggested summer school in June for a couple of hours, 4 days a week, but we aren't sure about that. We take Grace  back at the end of March to complete the testing.

I was a star today!