Today was the day, we went to visit the school where Matthew will attend Kindergarten next year. My husband went to this school, and it's a great place.
The playground is cool, too!
We had to go from station to station for different screenings. The first was with the nurse and was pretty uneventful. Then we were ushered down the hallway into the developmental screening. The teacher asked Matthew to take the blue and yellow bears and arrange them in a pattern...thanks to Nick Jr, errrrr, my awesome parenting skills, he easily arranged them in this fashion: one blue, one yellow, one blue, one yellow. (Phew, we were off to a good start, I was a bit worried that he would just stare at the lady.) She then asked him if he could write his name at the top of the paper. Now, we've been having discussions about this because he always just writes "Matt" on his preschool papers, but doesn't want to be called Matt. Why does he do this? Because he's so darn competitive and wants to be first at every-single-thing, and thinks by shortening his name he'll get done first. Too bad best little friend's name in class is RJ, but I digress.
He easily writes "Matt" on his paper and looks up at me. He knew I wanted him to write the whole thing, and says "I'm working on it!" Ok, I turn away because maybe he'll do better if I'm not watching. (I hear teachers giggling in the background.) But he did it, the whole long drawn out name. He then easily identified every letter, counted to 10, knew his shapes, and basic colors. Finally the nice teacher asks "Matthew, do you know what color my pants are?" He replied "chartreuse," then proceeds to insist on carrying my purse all by himself and left the room. Um.......... what 5 year old boy freely throws around the word chartreuse? The teachers were still giggling as I left the room to head to the next station...speech.
This teacher was very nice also, and had Matthew count how many puppies he saw on one paper, how many babies on the next, which cookie on the page was 1/2, and which was whole. He answered everything correctly! The last stop at this station, the teacher wanted to see what words he'd think of for different things. She said "If I'm freezing, you could say that I'm as cold as _____." I'm sure she expected ICE to be the answer. No. My kid says "Jupiter." She looked at me, I looked at her, and I just shrugged my shoulders. She admitted that she had no idea if he was right, and looked it up. And he was. Other questions were "If I was burning up, I'd be hot as ____," which he replied "Saturn." I'm just thanking sweet baby Jesus that he didn't say "Hell." Also, "If I was such a good swimmer, you could say that I swim like a _____." I would've said fish, but Matthew said mermaid. A good imagination that kid has!
He also passed his hearing and vision tests with flying colors, and he seemed to really enjoy himself. I can't even imagine that my baby boy will be getting on a big school bus very soon and going to school all day every day. It seems like just yesterday that he was just learning to walk!
