Stephen finished his first season playing soccer this month. He acquired two new buddies after the first session, both of whom are studying to be speech pathologists, which is exciting! He needed a lot less assistance by the end of the season!
Stephen also had a Special Olympics "Stars of the Future" event this month. Stephen did really well, and was much more confident in his ability to participate in the various activities.
Obviously, we also did Halloween. Stephen dressed as a Green Lantern this year, and was thrilled! I was at school, but Erik took Stephen out to trick-or-treat, and said he did really well! Again, he used his "talker" independently to say "trick-or treat, thank you," and "Happy Halloween!" We are so proud of him.
We made some changes at school for Stephen his month too. After multiple meetings with "team Stephen," we have started transitioning Stephen into a general education setting (also known a inclusion). For now, he is spending an hour each morning in group learning in a Kindergarten classroom, with an aide. We opted to have Stephen repeat Kindergarten this year because there were some state-wide curriculum changes and we felt that he might struggle with the 1st grade curriculum while also trying to learn how to behave in a traditional classroom setting. So far, Stephen is performing MAGNIFICENTLY! The teacher sends home the curriculum the weekend before so that I can program his talker for him so that he can participate appropriately, and he does that very well. In fact, when called upon one day this week, Stephen read a book OUT LOUD to his class. We are just thrilled with how well he is doing in this classroom, and in his other class as well. The current plan is to have him spending half-days in the Kindergarten class starting in January. It's all been so exciting!
