Little V is a Pre-Schooler??!??!??!

Well, this past week has been a completely new experience for us as a family. On Tuesday was the school's Opening Ice Cream social and orientation, where we met Vienna's teacher; Mrs. Dana and got to take a little tour of the school. Then on Thursday and Friday, for pre-schoolers it was called 'integration days' where they get dropped off for only 1 hour and parents are asked to stay at the school just in case. For us those were her first days of pre-school. All I can say is she LOVES it and is super duper excited and ready. She will start on Tuesday, Sept 3 (the day after labor day) officially and go for the full 2.5 hrs from 9-11:30. Lincoln is going to be lonely while she is gone, but this will be our date time, so it will go by fast. The neat part about this pre-school program is it's an integrated peer model program where the theory is children with special needs or disabilities will learn things better from a peer than an adult. To be a peer-model student Vienna has s screening interview where she is in a classroom being observed and notes are taken, while the parents are answering all sorts of in depth questions about their child. It was intense and kind of surprising. But she made the cut because they accepted her to be a peer model. I have heard amazing things about this program and how great it is for kids to learn sympathy, empathy, compassion and understanding. There are even higher needs children that are in wheel chairs, require constant behavioral care and have autism that the peer models will get to interact and work with on a regular basis, but aren't in their classrooms all the time. I'm very excited for her! She is already such a sweet, compassionate and loving girl but this kind of experience will be remarkable. We are so blessed to be her parents and to call her ours!
 Here are some pics...

First Day outfit!

Walking up to the doors.

School close-up. This school is layed out on a hill and the pre-schoolers are a completely separate area of the school with their own entrance and level of the floor. It's quite cool.

Going up the ramp. Lincoln is saying "cheese"

She got to play dress-up and color a big picture on the eisel.

This is integration day 2.

I was really trying to capture the curly cuteness of her hair.