The big event mid-week for Kate was that she lost tooth #2, at school even!
The big event mid-week for Anna was the annual IEP meeting, to monitor her progress, to set new goals, and to evaluate the overall plan for Anna's education and time at school. Big picture ... Anna has an amazing team around her at school. Each member is looking out for Anna's best interests with their particular specialty, but also has a good perspective on Anna as a whole person.
In terms of progress at school in the past year, Anna has come a long way, both academically as well as functionally. She has met many of the goals set for her last year, both those requiring specific tests as well as those that are more observational in nature. Her reading, in particular, has greatly improved, thanks in part to her ipad app that allows her to download virtually any book, make it "large print", and narrow down what she sees to only 3 lines at a time. Of course, Anna's hard work and motivation played a big part in this progress, too. No matter what the specific reasons, just know that Anna has made amazing progress all aspects of her reading in the last two years.
As part of the review process, it has been decided to scale back some of Anna's support at school to allow her more independence. Sounds great. Everyone is already looking ahead to what we can do for Anna now that will help her in the coming years. Also great. We are all pleased with how far Anna has come, but we all (including Anna) look to the future to see what she can work on next.
As always, we are incredibly grateful for our local school district. The programs, the staff, the students ... we couldn't imagine anything better right now.
The other nice perk of the week was that the girls has little homework. Hooray! For Anna especially, these little breaks are nice.
Since Thursday was going to be kind of crummy outside and the girls were both off of school, I picked up a set of perler beads earlier in the week. I don't think our kids have ever played with them at our house before!
Whenever there was a moment of down time, they were the preferred activity all weekend. Here are just a few of Kate's creations.
Her creativity, in particular, really showed through with this basic set of colored beads.
Friday we took the kids down to Rockford to the Discovery Museum. They all wanted to show Matt some of the fun exhibits on this field trip.
Although the trip wasn't as memorable as the one we took in August, I think the kids had a good time.
In the future, however, I will look ahead to a weekend as a whole before planning a day trip on a no-school Friday. The rest of the weekend turned out to be busier than I expected.
Saturday we participated in a S.T.E.A.M. activity at our local library. We created a paper castle and a few catapults out of spoons, rubber bands, and pencils. Then we all fired marshmallows at the castle walls :)
Immediately after the library activity, the kids walked (or rode in a wheelchair) for the Halloween costume parade. This fun local tradition drew many more participants this year because of the beautiful weather.
Sunday's activities will be reserved for a separate post.
Our Halloween evening on Monday started well, but like with many other families, it ended with some over-tired kids who were already experiencing a candy hangover.
I took the kids out for about an hour before dinner while it was still light out and the weather was warm enough that we didn't need coats. After dinner the girls actually had homework to do. Really?!?! Oh, well.
Tuesday morning was a little rough on some members of the family, but we all made it out the door relatively on time.
Tuesday's highlight so far has been a picnic and nature walk at Aldo Leopold Nature Center for me and the boy.
I've been wanting to do something like this all fall and we *finally* managed to do it.
What a beautiful day we had for our time together!
We'll take a 70 degree day in November any time!
Stay tuned for another post soon about Sunday.
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