We had Kirby’s IEP meeting today and it was about transitioning to Kindergarten (not mainsteam K, but a special needs class). I was thinking of keeping him in the preschool one more year as I wasn’t sure he was doing well enough with his social skills and whatnot.

But, well, we had the meeting today and we were able to visit the current class (in session) and see the room and meet his speech therapist and teacher and we really really like it all!

I think he will absolutely LOVE the class and do really really well.

The class this year has 10 kids, and about half are in K, a few in 1st grade and a couple in 2nd. I love the idea of him being around older kids, even if they are special needs as well, and they do some mainstreaming with the regular K class each week too.

Plus I really like the speech lady too, it really made me realize how much I don’t really like his current one. They are increasing his speech to about 1 1/2 hours per week which is like double what he has now. (Plus we’re finally getting him into private speech again too.)

I like his current teacher, but Kirby’s behaviors really depend on what the other kids around him are like and I know being around older/higher functioning/more verbal kids will really help him.

I’m pretty excited! Daddy is too. I walked in there telling Daddy we are not signing the IEP hehe, but we were both so happy with the set-up that we signed.

They were pretty impressed with his academic skills too. They said he’s above K level and will probably put him with the 1st or 2nd graders for those lessons/activities. Yes, he still needs work in speech and he’s just a very energetic kid who gets excitable easily (read: distracted) but it’s mostly a happy excited so I think it won’t be a problem.

Good grief, I can’t believe we’ll have a kid in KINDERGARTEN!