It’s coming this fall——->kindergarten for Cooper!

This year Coop has been maturing right before our eyes. He and I completed Silas’s kindergarten writing book where Coop learned to write all his letters and numbers. {Retention of those letters and numbers is another thing, but at least he’s worked through them all.} Now we’re working on a math book, and Coop’s conceptual thinking is impressive.

Since Cooper has struggled with timidity, we’ve had lots of conversations about being brave, and I even bought him a “Be Brave” tiger shirt from Target. My heart has soared when I’ve observed him trying new things–things he would ordinarily back away from.

We’ve also been coaching him to be a problem-solver. Instead of merely identifying that he needs something or has gotten stuck on something, we ask him to think of a way he could get the needed thing or find a way through the obstacle he’s facing. After all these months, I’ve noticed several times when he hasn’t mentioned anything to me, but found a creative solution to the problem.

Kindergarten is both an exciting and terrifying thought for Cooper. When asked whether or not he’s excited about it, he  definitely says no. But…..I think he is looking forward to it–especially to the Daddy/son camping expedition Stephen is taking him on this August. He’s counting down the days!

Mid-April, our school hosted a Kindergarten Orientation. We missed it for Silas since we were still in AZ at that point, but I loved taking Coop. He and I looked at Silas’s schoolwork that was hanging on the hall bulletin board, we met all the kinder teachers, and talked to the principal. One of Cooper’s best friends will be entering kindergarten too, so it was fun to see them and hope that maybe the boys would be assigned the same classroom teacher.

Cooper seemed so confident and brave at the orientation that I could see God had answered his prayer request that he wouldn’t be scared. Afterwards, we noticed Silas had left his bicycle at the school. I told Cooper to try and see if he could ride it. To my very great surprise, not only did he immediately hop on and try, but he actually rode a two-wheeler with no training wheels for the first time without any help from us or practice. {click to see video}

Cooper, you’re ready to take off!