A Kizzy Update

Yesterday I took Kizzy in to be evalutated through our school district. I'm not sure how it works in Utah, but here in Minnesota evey child has to have an evaluation before entering kindergarten. They check for vision, hearing, fine and gross motor skills, speech, behavioral and developemental progress. They had some sort of scoring process where the minimum they look for at her age is 18 - average is 21 - and perfect is 26. Our girl scored a 23. They things that she didn't score on were kind of funny to me.  One was jumping on one foot 5 times in a row. She jumped 2 times. Then I was told that they don't have 3 year olds do that part of the assesment. Considering she was still 3 only a matter of weeks ago, its not a big deal. Another part was absolutely hilarious. This is what I heard.

The Lady: Tell me about this button.
Kizzy: Oh! Those go on shirts. And you put em through the hole and it holds your shirt together!
L: Anything else?
K: Nope.
L: Well, what color is it?
K: Blue.
L: Tell me about this truck.
K: It goes super fast and races. It goes on a green light and stops on a red light.
L: Anything else?
K: Nope
L: What color is it?
K: oh, it's yellow.

Apparently they were looking for descriptions such as the colors and shapes of the objects. Kizzy easily knew the color and shapes and thought they were asking for the function of the item.

Another went like this

L:Brother is a boy and sister is a....
K: Girl
L: an elephant is big and a mouse is....
K: little
L: a bird flies and a fish....
K: jumps up out of the water and then splashes back down.

Many of you know I've been concerned about Kizzy's speech for a few years now. Their assesment of her speech was that she should be evaluated further. They gave me a chart that showed different consenant sounds and at what ages children can correctly pronounce them the more difficult r and s sounds and combination sounds that aren't expected until closer to ages 6 and 7 she has a hard time with. But the red flag for her was that out of the sounds that up to 90% of children can correctly pronounce by turning age 4, she's in the 10% that cannot. So it looks like we'll be taking her into a speech therapist for further evaluation.

She's in the 10th percentile in height and weight.  She's slowly beginning to try new foods and we've been able to get her to start taking "no thank you" bites. She's learning her alphabet and doing really well with letter recognition and doing better with what sounds letters make. During family home evenings if we ask her what we talked about she can give us a recap on the subject. Her praying is becoming more personal and elaborate. She's begun saying things such as giving thanks for healthy bodies and specific activities, both those in the past and things she's looking forward to.

At the evaluation I was asked to fill out a form asking behavioral questions and it made me realize that although she's still my  fiesty one, her melt downs and temper tantrums have (almost) disappeared. I was asked to state what some of my favorite things about her are and I absolutely love how friendly she is, how caring she is for other's wellbeing and also how imaginative she is.