My Little School Boy

Pablo recently completed a 10-session Play-to-Learn program. Classes were two hours a day, twice a week. A driver picked him up and his nanny along with his classmate Javi. We wanted a bit more variety to his week, get him to interact with other kids and were generally curious as to how he would react to going to "school." It was a fairly short stint and things sort of fell into place so it was an easy decision to let him go.

He loved it. No separation anxiety whatsoever. I was apprehensive at first because I wasn't sure how he would react to the carpool (different car, different people). But he had his nanny along so he was perfectly fine. His daddy brought him for the second session. Pablo hopped out of the car, stopped to check if Javi was with him then marched on up to class; he didn't even bother to look back to his Dada.

Pablo would come home every week with a new number, shape, and letter. There was one week where they took up sharing, another one was animals. The homework was interesting - every so often there would be a letter about items that would be needed for the following session and activities that we could do at home to introduce/reinforce what was going to be taken in class. Aside from preparing what he needed, we never did any reinforcement at home. :P Bad mommy.

It's not that I didn't believe in the homework, it was just too much for my little boy. He's not that verbal yet. He has a vocabulary of maybe 100 words and can form simple sentence when he chooses to speak in English. Most of the time it's a whole lot of Pablo-talk. He has his own way of communicating and most of the time it's pretty effective.

Normal conversation isn't really possible yet, and I'm alright with that. His gross and fine motor skills are good; there's evidence of problem-solving and reasoning. During the last day of the program, his teacher said that he was starting to say a few words. Her comment struck me as being really odd because I was well aware of the fact that Pablo can speak (on hindsight it may have just been an attempt to make conversation).

The owner of the school (a friend from work) is starting regular classes next week. This entails more commitment from us (one schoolyear!) and I'm not ready for it. It's a good thing we're on summer break. I don't have to worry about teaching other kids for the moment and can focus on my own.