1st...

We really felt like this was the year we wanted to retain him, it was our best chance to do it. We figured it would not effect him if we did it when he was so young, but Hunter knew he was 'graduating' from Kindergarten and moving on to 1st grade. The school again fought us and told us he would do awesome. I had no doubts about how well he would do academically, he was definitely above grade level, but sometimes socially/emotionally is more important and they did not want to listen to that! Hunter sat in on a first grade class and they were sitting on the floor, learning how to look up words in a dictionary. Hunter thought that was so cool, he loved dictionaries (still does)! Then they played a game called 'SPARKLE' - when you stand in a circle and spell out vocabulary words by taking turns with the letters and if you mess up, you sit down. Hunter was one of the 3 left standing, and remember this was a 1st grade class a few weeks away from being 2nd graders and he was one of the youngest in Kindergarten. When I met with this teacher to ask her how he did, she was amazed - she  would become his 1st grade teacher within a month (Hunter's school is year round) and he adored her right away...there was no turning back. Hunter was placed in 1st grade, spending 90% of his day in the General Ed classroom with an Aide that was nearby. The other 10% was spent in O.T, P.T and Speech, he also qualified for Adapted P.E since he had many gross motor challenges and really low muscle tone. There were alot of new things he got to do as cool 1st grader - this was the year they would start Specials; Music, Art, Computers, Science and P.E. They also ate lunch in the M.P room with their class and since there were around 1,100 kids on year round schedule, the Principal kept a tight ship, it was really run like a Private School. You can imagine the noise level at lunch but he did an amazing job at keeping it as quiet as possible. Hunter still needed to have cotton in his ears in the beginning to soften the sounds, but overall he did great. Hunter's teacher updated me almost daily on how he did, I really appreciated that. At the end of the year, his class did a little play for all the parents, he memorized his lines immediately and he was one of the few that was not scared to get up in front of everyone. I will never forget that feeling of being the proudest mom in the world...