We're still here and doing well, but there just hasn't been much time to update the blog lately. In fact, I started this post back in November and am just now sitting down to finish it. I've got several update posts that I want to write, so I'll do my best to put together more frequent posts.
Nikolas started kindergarten in late July. He loves school and is doing better than we expected. He has a team of seven wonderful teachers/therapists/aides that work with him each week to help him learn. He has a classroom teacher, a special education teacher, two classroom aides, a speech therapist, an occupational therapist and a physical therapist. His teachers have great things to say about him and the progress that he is making. He loves school and looks forward to going every day.
He was diagnosed with childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) last spring, and he has made so much progress with his speech since starting school. Extra speech therapy and being in a classroom with lots of chatty five and six year olds have done wonders for his vocabulary, sentence structure and pronunciation. We have high hopes that he'll beat CAS soon and be able to be consistently understood by everyone.
Nikolas is learning to read in kindergarten. He knows all of his letters and most of his letter sounds. He does really well with his sight words and knows every single one he has learned since starting school. He is starting to blend letters to be able to read basic words, but he struggles with being able to write words on his own.
He started kindergarten not being able to write a single letter on his own. He can now write his first name and about half of his last name. His handwriting isn't the neatest, but he works hard.
Math has been a challenge. He does okay with patterns and he can count until 15 before he starts missing numbers. He does fairly well with identifying two-digit numbers. One of his goals is to be able to count to 100 by the end of the school year. We're working on it, but he's not a big fan of math.
His social skills are pretty good. When he started preschool, one of his goals was for him to initiate interactions with his peers. He has no issues with that now and has turned into a very social little boy. He has friends at school and seems to play well with them.
One of his major struggles at school is his behavior. Nikolas likes to be in charge of every situation, and when someone tells him to do something that he doesn't want to do, he gets a little too vocal. His teacher uses a card system where everyone starts on green each morning and moves to yellow, orange or red throughout the day if they misbehave. Nikolas likes all colors and his behavior chart looks more like a rainbow than it should. The majority of his yellow, orange and red cards were earned simply because his teacher asked him not to do something, and he ended up flipping out over it. Part of his problem is that his maturity level is not quite up to the level of his peers. He acts more like a 3-4 year old than a 5 1/2 year old. We are considering having him go through a second year of kindergarten so he can catch up to his peers a little more in that area. (He doesn't turn six until May, so he's one of the younger kids in his class.)
He goes to school with a good attitude every morning and works hard most of the time. He wants to do well, and he's always proud to show off his work when he's done a good job or earned a green card for good behavior. School is hard work, but he doesn't give up!
We arrived in Sofia at 12:50pm on Sunday and were met by our attendant. He drove us to Kocherinovo, which is a small village located in the southwestern part of Bulgaria. It's known as "The Town of Storks". We were able to spot many nests on top of buildings and are excited to watch for storks when we return this summer. This part of the country is absolutely beautiful.
We checked into the Hotel Mishel, which is a small guest house that has six rooms. It's owned by a very nice couple that we got to know throughout the week. Our room was comfortable and we enjoyed having a small terrace.
