Well, the decision has been made! Nolan will be starting 1st grade in the fall! Adam and I met with his teacher today to talk about our options. I've mentioned before how his teacher has suggested giving Nolan another year in kindergarten, mainly to give him time to grow a little. Since that last parent teacher conference, I was curious to see how much Nolan would grow from then to now. So, I measured him then and measured him now. He's grown 1 inch. :) Nolan is not a fast grower, I've always known that. The chances are pretty good that he would be smaller than the kindergarteners next year as well. So, we didn't want him to be self-conscious about his height and be what held him back.
Mrs. Pitzer broke up the developmental stages into, physical, emotional, social, and cognitive. Obviously, physically Nolan is behind. He's a small kid, but Adam said, quite bluntly, that's not why we are going to hold him back. :) We are working with him on building up his fine motor skills, which will just take time. Also, she mentioned his slower walking. For some reason, she wasn't aware that Nolan is missing a toe, and that kinda slows him down a little. He kinda walks with a waddle, if you really pay attention. :) Once we told her that, she seemed to drop that concern. Next, emotionally, Nolan is doing ok. He is the youngest boy in his class and the youngest girl is one day younger than him. So, obviously he's going to have some less mature behaviors than the others. If Nolan gets hurt, he gets really upset and wants a band-aid, go to the office, take a nap, see his mama, etc. Other than that, he's fine. :) Socially, Nolan is doing great. He's a good friend, works well with others, but at the same time works well independently. His teacher said that he has a strong sense of what's right and wrong. When someone is doing something wrong, he tells the teacher and has a "plan of action." Well, that shows his strong leadership skills, which is good, but is actually the teacher's job. He is a natural leader and she said there is no doubt that if we held him back, he would be the leader of the class. We were afraid, that might actually get him in trouble, if as it is he's already telling the teacher what to do. :P Keeping him one of the younger kids, would hopefully keep him from being too bossy. :) Cognitively, Nolan is doing excellent. He's one of the best readers in his class, smart, and is a quick learner. She said if we were to hold him back, he would for sure need to be in the other kindergarten class, where the teacher is more advanced. That teacher taught 1st grade for 18 years or so and basically teaches kindergarten like a 1st grade class. We were still concerned though that the information would be repetitive and Nolan would get bored. Nolan LOVES to learn right now and we don't want him to lose that because he was held back and not given enough of a challenge. We're afraid that if he gets bored, he'll be more relaxed and maybe goof off, get in trouble, etc. Also, if he thinks he can do all that again in kindergarten, he might carry that on with him in future years. Along with all this, we were worried about his self-esteem going down because of getting teased or whatever for being held back. He's got quite a high self-esteem now for a young fellow and I'd hate to see that change. So, after we talked, I think we all felt pretty good about moving Nolan ahead with his class. He's got a lot of support outside of school as well, and I'm sure he'll be just fine.
Another bit of good news: Nolan is 1 out of 2 kids in his class who reached the goal of reading 15,000 pages or more this year! Whew, that was a lot of books, not to mention a lot of library fines. :P Anyways, we're proud of him! Nolan gets to have a limo ride to Round Table Pizza coming up soon! :) I don't even think I've been on a limo ride...
