The School Day

Today I managed to get in this year's first full day of school!

After settling into Ella's schedule, I had reassessed our priorities and retooled our school day and came up with a new system that would allow us to get the important stuff done.

The new school plan is based on a simple checklist of modules with interchangeable components. During this phase, a typical school day will include at minimum: four RDI activities, a heavy emphasis on toilet training, three fine motor and two gross motor exercises, helping to care for Ella three times over the course of the day, and at least four occurrences of something I've labeled "quality time" (this is basically delight-directed one-on-one time with Shiloh and Julie or myself). I also generated a list of activities for each module, which makes planning the day a breeze.

Today was our first day on the new plan, and it went remarkably well. I was able to complete all of my goals for the day (in between fiddling with Ella) with enough time for us to cook supper, do some housework, and spend the evening together.

In other news, Shiloh was perception-sharing at Walmart today (this has been one of his developmental goals that we've been working quite hard on). He also said, "Here," when showing me where something was. Yay, Shiloh!