After a little background check on our family, she presented her assessment as well as her goals for G to achieve by the end of the school year. Some of the things she told me and Chard on what G needed to work on, like longer attention span, learning to pack away things after use and following teacher's instructions - i totally agreed with. But her other observations - i was in disbelief!
* Cannot kick a ball
* No concept of alphabet
* Unable to identify colors and shapes
Are you serious?! Are you sure we are talking about my son, Gabriel Hijo Tumapang Pang? G can kick a ball while it's at rest, he can kick it while it's moving, he can kick it while holding it, he can toss it then kick it. He can kick a ball! He can even catch a ball now. But i was keeping an open mind. He probably hasn't been given the opportunity to show his soccer prowess yet. haha
No concept of alphabet? This is another 'seriously?!?' A close friend who is a teacher explained that a child needs to recite his alphabet perfectly before they can give him a 'check' on that. I get that since sometimes G really doesn't want to do stuff especially when he's told to - but what was used was 'NO CONCEPT'. This is really weird because G is always reciting his alphabet even during 'quiet time' and i figured he would have done that in school too - G was never the quiet, shy boy. Also, i mentioned before how he is into spelling.
Unable to identify colors? Just the other week, G suprised me when he wanted to color something with 'pits' (he meant peach :D). And then just yesterday he told me the color of his towel is blue light ( he meant light blue:D). Gabriel already knew his primary colors before he was 2. And shapes? He knows his basic shapes and even knows his heptagon until dodecagon.
I asked how she came up with these assessments. I didn't get a sound answer because we were running out of time. When i told her that Gab already knew these things, she just removed it from her list. I understand that these are just intial assessments, but how can she create a proper program for G if she can't see what my son is capable of doing?
After thinking it through and going over the assessment for the Nth time, i came to realize - she has identified the socio-emotional needs of G, and that is more important. It is actually the reason why we wanted him to go to school in the first place, to learn how to socialize with kids his own age, to know how to react when a kid grabs a thing from him, to know how to control his emotions. We, especially yours truly, are not particularly experts on handling our emotions so that would be hard to teach our son, we need experts' help on that. :) The cognitive side, that we can handle!
And that's just what we have been working on this week. One of the identified need for improvement is G's use of palmar grip in holding the pencil. Upon further inquiry, Teach was able to identify the culprit, his iPAD! By making this sometimes the yaya, i knew it would eventually come around and ask for its pay. This week, we limited his use of iPad, kept all his paint brushes, brought out the pencils and colors and started writing and coloring.
Here are some of his work...
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| he can write his ABCs :-) |
We also learned that one activity to improve his hand muscles is to play with clay or play dough so i looked for an easy recipe in the web. Here it is:
2 cups plain flour
2 tbsp oil
2 cups water
1 cup salt
1 tbsp cream of tartar (to help it keep longer) (we skipped this)
food colouring or edicol dye
Mix all together in a pan except dye over low heat and constantly stir until it gets sticky (about 5 mins.). Turn off heat and let it cool. Divide dough and add food coloring. They are not as hard as the commercial ones but at least you know they're safe. :-)
The encounter with G's teacher made me realize one thing - i should stick to what i know about my son and yet keep an open mind for other people's observations. Not everybody can and will see how wonderfully talented my kid is. I should understand that it's a lot different to look through my eyes when it comes to him. And i shouldn't discount the fact that I probably see him as this since he is my own. :-)
♥♥♥
After reading my post, it made me realize how im fretting over this ONLY almost 3 yo kid. hahaha. But I can't help it, research shows how important the forming years are and how working adults are benefiting from having a good early-childhood education. So I will try to be there every step of the way. :-)
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