La Familia Willardson: Building Blocks Graduation...

Nash graduated from the Building blocks preschool program at Faith Church. I am so happy Nash was able to attend this amazing preschool for 2 years. It has been such a great experience for him. Here are a few excerpt from his IEP dated 12/13/12 from his Special Ed teacher Desireah Poandl:

"Nash receives specialized instruction and speech therapy within his preschool classroom. Nash is a pleasure to work with and has really developed great skills over the last year and a half. His self-confidence and communication have flourished. Nash has become louder this year and is communication more to express his wants, needs, and feelings. It is great to hear his voice...He enjoys participating in the classroom jobs and free play. His favorite activities include playing with the cars and dinosaurs."

"Goal 1: Nash is making wonderful progress with his interactions with peers in his preschool program. He is greeting peers when they arrive or join in his play activity. He is able to share toys with the peers and engaging in adult facilitated turn taking activities. We will continue to work on his peer interactions."

Nash LOVES to be with friends but he struggles with confidence and social cues. He has come a long way. I LOVE that he is speaking out now and really talking to others rather then just at home.

"Goal 3: ....He really seems to enjoy preschool this year and is not as shy as he was last year to engage in the variety of the activities."

Most of Nash's IEP was centered around speech. I was not a huge fan of his speech therapist through the intermediate unit but Nash seemed to learn quite a bit from her....so I guess that shows that sometimes mom needs to back off!!!

December 2012 "Nash is making steady progress and is using most age appropriate sounds. He has mastered the use of the /m, b, p, s/ sounds in the initial position of the words in sentences and is demonstrating carryover to conversation. He is using the /sh/ in the initial position of words with approximately 65% accuracy. He is using consolant clusters to include most /s/ blends with approximately 70% accuracy which improves his overall intelligibility. He has particular difficulty with /l/ blends."

He ended the school year with this progress report: "/sh/ in the initial position of words during structured activities with approximately 90% accuracy and is beginning to use initial /sh/ in sentences independently. He is no longer stopping the sound using /t/ or /d/ for /sh/, but usually substitutes /s/ for /sh/ such as "my sirt/my shirt". He is using consonant clusters to include more /s/ blends with approximately 80% accuracy which improves his overall intelligibility. He has particular difficulty with /l/ blends. He is using the /l/ in the initial position of the words duing structured activites with approximately 90% accuracy which has increased his accuracy with /l/ blends to approximately 80% in words. Nash has difficulty with voicing of final consonants /g, d, b/ and will usually replace them with voiceless consonants using k/g, t/d, p/b such as pik/pig, ret/red, tup/tub. These are improving but still require modeling."

***This makes me laugh because he talks like a navajo! ;)

Oh man I love Mrs. Kim Cowell! She was an excellent teach and Nash REALLY loved her. This part of the graduation made me cry. She had asked each of the kids what their hope for the next year was and had them put those "wishes" (little marbles) in a jar. Then with each child she told them what her dreams for them were this next year. It was so touching how much she loved each kid individually.

We are bad parents and can't remember what she said to Nash.

Nash was always so excited at the end of a school day because they would do this goodbye chant that they added to each week. He would often drag us into the classroom so he could show us what they added.