Getting Ready for Kindergarten!

Tomorrow Emily starts her first day of kindergarten at her new school, Eastbrook Elementary school! The school is in Winter Park, right behind the neighborhood that Denise and her family lived in when we met them. In fact, it's Uncle Stevie's old stomping grounds. :) It's still a pretty far drive for us, but it still seems like a faster drive than driving to UCP. Probably because we are used to driving into Oviedo all the time, and from there, it's only another 10 to 15 minutes to the new school. Plus, this is the school that has the class Emily needs to learn skills like getting dressed, feeding herself, and using pictures to communicate.


Last weekened we took Emily to get some new school clothes, classroom supplies, and of course, a big girl backpack! She looked at all the girly backpacks and then picked the shiniest one with glitter that made the best scratchy noises. :) It's a turquoise Tinkerbell backpack, and it's almost bigger than her! But she still thought it was funny to have it on and walk around Target with it.







On Wednesday, Emily and I went to her school for the first time to register her for kindergarten and to talk about what things will be like in the new classroom. I had a lot of questions and I was getting nervous about not knowing the answers to them before the first day of school. But the staff was wonderful! We met the new teacher, Miss Angela, as well as the office secretary, the guidance secretary, the guidance counselor, the clinic nurse, the speech therapist, the principal, and the assistant principal. They answered ALL of my questions and they were wonderful with Emily. I felt so at ease when we left and I really think we are going to have a great experience here!



On Friday morning, we all went to "Meet the Teacher" at Eastbrook. Austin and Dad came this time, and so we all got to see Miss Angela, as well as the two assistants that will be in Emily's room. Each of them have been teaching special needs children for over a decade. They were super excited to have Emily in their classroom, especially because she was very interested in all of the toys (the other students in the class aren't really playing with toys just yet) and kept pulling whatever she wanted off of the shelves. I loved seeing her name on her bin of supplies and on the birthday bulletin board!



I also love that the teachers are so caring and understanding, and they encouraged us to come visit whenever we wanted. Miss Angela also keeps her clasrrom phone on at all times, so she said we can call anytime we wanted. There are only 6 students in Emily's class with three teachers, so I am very happy about that. I think Emily's going to have a lot of fun in this classroom, which is the best way for her to learn new things! The teachers usually have gym mats on the floor so the kids can be barefoot (since they all like to take off their shoes) and clumsy without getting hurt. She gravitated towards the things she recognized, like this play barrel from MyGym...