Dr's Office Homeschooling

Since Nolen is requiring so many frequent doctors appointments, I have had to start rethinking my approach to homeschooling. Before I relied heavily on worksheets/traditional style learning, but that doesn't always translate well into a doctors setting where my girls will have to work independantly from me. This is what I have found that works

-Lots of File Folder Games!
-Puzzles

I carry these puzzles in a coupon sorter, and they very easily pull out. Kaelyn using them for her phonics and word recognition. Anna uses them for learning how to sort the colors and put the puzzles together.

While waiting for Nolen's medication, Kaelyn wrote a book (about 3 musketeers, I have to find it so that I can put a picture up) while Anna played with more puzzles.

-Lots of Reading! Kaelyn has progressed beyond Short A in Progressive Phonics and I am combing Progressive Phonics with Hubbard's Cupboard so that we are hitting both Phonics and Sight words! I'm so excited to see her make strides in reading! She is doing great at sounding out three letter words, especially those with the short a sound, and she can sight read *on, had, this, see, at, we, will, and a few more that I can't quite remember.

-Lots of everyday math. For example, with Fruit Snacks I make Anna tell me the color while I make Kaelyn sort them by color, tell me which has more, which has less etc. It seems to be working (with Kaelyn). Yesterday she told me that "If we had two cinderellas then we would have four evil stepsisters. But I like to pretend that Cinderella has a nice sister like Anna, so that would be two nice sisters as well" She's spontaneously drew a pattern (for her calender chart which is exactly what we used to do when we had daily school time). She asks to see this chart so that she can tell me "what kind of day it is, and what the weather was like".

-Lots of Drawing- In addition to making her own story book, she also regurgitated the plant life cycle! Complete with water hose, sunlight, dirt, seed, seedling, full blown flower with roots!!!!

Then we donated our hair!!! She is so excited to be doing something to help others. I told her I was donating my hair and explained how they would use my hair to make wigs for people who don't have hair. She didn't understand so we toured the Locks of Love photo gallery and she was SOLD on the idea.

Before she got it cut!

her and her ponytail! It was about 8 inches of hair!!!

The after! I love it because she can take care of it by herself!! As much as she likes it, I think she will grow it back out!

Nolen is doing better. He has been having choking episodes that can not be explained away easily. They occur despite position, whether he is eating or not (meaning he chokes on his own spit), time of day, etc. His peditrician started him on Zantac to see if it might help the symptoms (it seems to have helped the severity of his choking, although it could just be that I am more in tune to his cues) and we see the GI doctor on Monday. Hopefully we can get a suck swallow test scheduled so that we can determine the cause. He is doing much better with tracking/head control, and seems to be gaining strength daily. He has been spacing out and did so that the therapist was concerned. I'm going to be tracking the time and duration so that we can determine if it's something to note to the Neurologist come Jan/Feb.


More Homeschool posts at Preschool Corner!