A visit to Pookie’s class

Today I visited Pookie’s class. I like to visit so that BAGD and I can better understand what his environment is like. The teacher and I sometimes trade tips, but mostly I am watching Pookie, like a fish at the aquarium, seeing which rocks he likes to swim around and which seaweed he likes to nibble.

When I arrived today, he said Hello to me and was fine with my being there. That is typical. I was surprised a few minutes later when he told me to go home and gave me a nudge towards the door. Oh, silly Pookie. When will you learn that I will always be in your face? I am your mother.

The kids were working on the letter N this week. Pookie is not pleased with N week, because it means they no longer get to sing the Manatee Song, which had to be left behind in M week. But, after he voices his discontent, he moves on. Today they made Noodle Necklaces. As the teacher was describing the project, she asked Pookie how many Noodles he would Need to make a Noodle Necklace in N week. He thought for a second and yelled “NINE!” He counted out nine noodles and quickly strung me a necklace to wear. Next was a worksheet on the letter N. Pookie colored the noodles just as the instructions said. His coloring is getting much better, but he still goes outside the lines and has no real enthusiasm for coloring. He just does it because they make him. On the back of his worksheet he colored and labeled the “Ners” (=nurse, inventive spelling, he sounded it out!)

Then he got to spend some time in his office, doing puzzles. When it was time for Math, he and another boy came to the center table and worked separately, with the teacher going back and forth between them. Pookie is working on addition with manipulatives. He is given a worksheet (folded in half so not so many problems show at a time and make it look overwhelming) with equations like “2+3″ and “5+2″. His manipulatives are colored clothespins that he clips on a board. He is to use red clothes pins for the first number and green clothespins for the second number, then count them all up. He does pretty well, but some of the equations he knows by sight, like 2+2 and 1+1, so that messes him up and he tries to guess others too. All in all, he gets about 75% of them correct. The ones he gets wrong are usually ones with “0″ or ones where he was not paying attention.

I also got to see him in his reading time. The teacher uses A to Z Reading and Pookie is on level H. His book today was about Police Officers and seemed pretty detailed to me. Each page had 4-5 sentences on it and included words like “State Trooper”, “uniform” and “helicopter”. He reads it quietly, but confidently.

I had to leave before they visited the Motor Room, but it was a good visit. Unfortunately, right as I was leaving Pookie had to leave the Leisure Area because he elbowed another boy. Pookie has a bad habit of leaving a toy and then getting upset when someone else goes to play with it. When that happened today, Pookie boxed the boy out a little, nothing too rough, but he still had to leave the area so that there was not an escalation of emotion. While that is sad, I was pleased to see Pookie ask the teacher “Are you still on green?” which means he understands that when he is naughty his behavior chart goes from green to yellow to red and he loses a privilege/reward at school. She told him he was still on green as long as he took a break in his office, which he did.

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