The first week....

Well...we survived the first week of school!  Me, my assistant, and my little bitties!  One of my students has yet to show up...she was sick all week! :-(  That makes me fear even more for this week.  Last week was hectic enough with the students that showed up!
My new student is a handful...and he was only there on Monday and Friday for half the day!  You know it's going to be a day when, five minutes into the day, you're drenched in sweat!  He needs constant supervision, which leaves only one other adult for the rest of the class.  He puts anything and everything in his mouth, so keeping him up off the floor is the best plan of action.  A lot easier said than done when the child likes to flop on the floor and go limp!  He did flop on the floor in the bathroom and lick the toilet seat!   On Friday, I literally spent an hour putting him in his seat and as soon as he sat for half a second, I said "Good sitting!  You're sitting!  Yay!!!"  It worked...he did sit for a few minutes at a time in a rocking chair!  Yay!
The biggest challenge so far (other than my new student) has been integrating my kids with general education students.  When they go to related arts, the other students haven't been fully accepting of them...yet.  And recess has been atrocious!  The other students this year have decided to play tag on the playground equipment.  It wouldn't be too bad, except they run up and down the stairs and several of my students almost got knocked down the stairs!  One of my kids was trying to go down the slide and another student was sitting at the top blocking the way!  I was so proud of my little bitty when I heard him saying, "Go, go, go!"  I was very annoyed with the boy at the top of the slide who ignored him and I finally told him, "Excuse me!  Please go down the slide, he wants to go down!"
On Friday, we were going down the hall at dismissal time and the hall was filled with lines of students everywhere.  We couldn't get through with our wheelchair and the rest of our kids.  One of my kids looked at one of the lines and said, "Excuse me!  Scoot over!"  Again, I was proud of her, and again, the kids just looked at her.  All in all, it seems like my kids have made some big gains over the summer and I think we'll be able to make lots of progress this year! But, the ultimate goal this year is to get my kids more integrated into the school environment...which looks like it will be a bigger task than I originally thought!