Moving Classes

This year Kiddy#1 started in a class at her nursery school that was exceptionally big and the age difference of the kids ranged between 2 years old and 4 years old.  Even though the age gap was big and Kiddy#1 was one of the younger kids when starting out in this class, she did really well especially in her art work.  In September a new teacher joined the school and the speech therapist who is seeing Kiddy#1 suggested that Kiddy#1 be moved to that class as there will be a small amount of kids in the class and Kiddy#1 might calm down a bit if the class is not as "busy" as the one she was at.  I knew it would be younger kids in the class, but assumed it would be the younger ones from the class she was at.  Clearly I was mistaken as I only realized afterwards that it was actually the older kids from the toddler class that went to this new teacher's class.  In other words Kiddy#1 is much older than them.

In Kiddy#1 previous class her art work was outstanding.  She loved building puzzles, anything between 24 and 40 pieces.  About two weeks ago I asked to see her art work to see if the change to the new class affected her schoolwork.  I was shocked when I saw the way she was colouring in!  From being one of the best in her class, it now looked like the pictures were coloured in by a 2 year old who just started to learn to hold a crayon.  We realized that she was copying what the younger kids were doing.  After a long meeting with the school principal and manager we decided to keep her in that class a little longer, but not let her sit with the smaller kids when they do art work.

Last week I overheard the old and new teacher discussing Kiddy#1's report for the term.  Apparently she refused to build a puzzle bigger than 8 pieces!  That is when I realized that not only is her art work falling behind, but so is everything else.  So I requested that from today she be moved back to the older class.  What does it help her being calmer, but her school work is falling behind?

I'm so nervous about her getting confused and feeling left out if she keeps moving from one class to another so I'm just hoping that it wouldn't upset her too much.  At least I know that she loves this teacher and it hopefully won't take too long before she adapts to being in the older class again.  Most of her friends are there so hopefully that would help too.

With regards to her speech coming along, she is doing very well and has improved so much over the past three months.   From not understanding much of what she was saying in July, we can have a conversation with her and actually understand her.  She gets less frustrated because she doesn't have to keep trying to make us understand what she is saying.