I’ll admit to being apprehensive about the day SJ would go to Kindergarten. She has always been so far behind in speech (due to her late identified hearing loss) that I just didn’t know if she would even be ready in time. At the end of her IEP meetings they always ask if I have any goals that I would personally like to add to her plan and I would always say that I want to reach academic goals like knowing the alphabet or being able to count past 10. It’s been a big mountain in my mind. Last evaluation report I received she was at the level of a 3 year old with her speech. My concern was how on earth she would be able to not only catch up with her vocabulary and articulation, but to learn reading, writing, and mathmatics at the same time!

Well, it’s been a little less than 2 months since her first day of Kindergarten and I have been completely blown away with her progress.

I know I sound dramatic, but I really cannot express enough how amazed I have been with what she has learned in such a small amount of time. It is is unbelievable!!!

We are talking about a girl that has made great strides in speech, but she rarely talks in complete sentences, doesn’t know the ABC’s (the song, or the order, but she does actually recognize them) and a lot of the words she does know are extremely difficult for her to enunciate. I am not undermining how far she has come, but I didn’t see her being ready for Kindergarten work at all, until she came home and completely proved me wrong!

In the past 8 weeks she has learned when her birthday is, she is really close to knowing all of the months of the year and days of the week.  She learned her city and state and how to spell it! She has come home talking about President Obama, The White House, and saying the pledge of Allegiance! In this video she leaves out “for which it stands”. It’s hit or miss, but she’s almost got it! *Never mind about the video for now. It’s too large to post, but I’ll work on that.

She knows several sight words and last night when she did her homework she was reading simple familiar sentences on her own and she had to write the missing word with multiple choice sight words. She did the whole lesson on her own (other than one written backwards, which is another topic entirely. I’ll have to tell you all about it sometime)

After she finished her assignment she said “I tell teacher I do homework by myself. Mommy, not help me.” I looked her and said “Yeah. That’s right” and  she said “You proud me.” It wasn’t a question, it wasn’t Are you proud of me? She said it as a fact, because it’s true. I am proud of her. I am so so proud of her. I just about cried in that moment. She has to work twice as hard just to get to the starting point, but she’s doing it.

I was going to do a post about this anyway, but it’s perfect timing because Ohio Valley Voices (SJ’s school) has just a couple days left in a competition to win $10,000 as one of Cincinnati’s favorite nonprofits. They are only a few hundred votes behind first place. It’s easy to vote and it would mean so much to me, SJ, and all the people impacted by this incredible school.

Go to moment.com> Choose Cincinnati> Fill in your name, email, business name, and phone number> Choose Ohio Valley Voices (I think it’s the 6th one down on the list)>click VOTE. It takes seconds to complete. The short form will ask for a business name. I don’t even know what you are supposed to put there, but I just put OVV, so feel free to do the same.

Thank you so much for supporting such a wonderful cause. I can’t guarantee that we’ll win, but it sure would help the school if we did!

This has been the best school year so far. I don’t know why I ever doubted.