IEP: Individual Education Plan

Today I met with my local school district to discuss Chickadee's IEP, even though she does not attend the local school. We have a rather cool option here, in that she is home-schooled and attends classes with other home-schoolers in the district. Because the school provides the administrative aspects of the classes, the district gets to keep us on their rosters (think funding) but the parents get to keep the control. I sign her up for the classes that are useful and ignore the rest. We go -- or not -- as we wish. She has taken dance, and art, and sign language there and will start 4-morning-a-week kindergarten next month.

Anyway, because we are in their home-school program, we can use the school's support services as if we were regular enrollees. So we had Chickadeee assessed last month and yes indeed she qualifies for services.

I've shared before about her linguistic abilities, so she will get speech therapy once a week to work on making intelligible sounds. She is also far far below her peers in fine-motor skills, cutting along the line, tracing, etc., and well below her peers in gross-motor skills, so she'll have Occupational Therapy also once a week. Both of these will happen on the same day at the school around the corner. How convenient is that?

If you know Chickadee in person, you are probably not at all surprised to hear about the speech therapy. The OT may take you by surprise though, as she seems nicely coordinated for her size. You look at her and think she is just fine for a four-year-old. And she is indeed just fine for a four-year old. Except that she is not a four-year old, she is a six-and-a-half year old.