Hey family and friends!
I wanted to start a "newsletter" on our homeschooling journey as another way to update and share on our learning process for Abigail. I want to try and do these monthly, so don’t worry, I won’t be bombarding you weekly or daily. Just a monthly summary of our learning activities and goals we’ve accomplished.
We started homeschooling on September 1st, 2022. We took it slow and eased into the process. We’re still kind of easing. I’m starting to slowly get to the more “challenging” activities.
As some may remember (or forgot) as we are in this journey, Abigail was diagnosed with a learning disorder, so please don’t grill her. She’ll get stressed out. The grade she would've been in public school would have been kindergarten, but I am switching activities back and forth between a preschool level and a kindergarten level. We're not truly at a kindergarten level yet. We're not too far behind, but we need some extra cheering on. :) We’re working on retaining memory. She was diagnosed with a mild intellectual disability. She had a full IEP service when she was at Irving Elementary. She had PT, OT, and Speech Therapy.
She has a reevaluation appointment in December and January at Children’s hospital. We’re in the process of working on getting her other services again. When I take her to the parks or watch her in volleyball, I can definitely see she still needs some physical therapy assistance, even Speech Therapy.
Speech: In volleyball or group setting, like music class or going to parks, she struggles with connecting with other kids. She did when she was in school, because of her being behind in her speech. When she plays volleyball she’ll go off to the side and away from the group. You can tell when observing her that her Speech is still lacking when you compare her to other kids in her age range. I know, comparing is a big no-no, but I like to at least see where she lines up with other kids her age since she doesn't really attend a "formal" classroom.
Gross Motor wise she has started to become a bit more daring with her climbing in the last few weeks, which has been nice to see. I don't really have any pictures, but we've also been working on the concept of 'over' and under' with throwing balls/bean bags, etc.
Fine Motor: We’ve been working on our scissors skills. Our gluing skills.
The themes we have worked on since the beginning of September have been directions/back to school, apples, animals, and weather (we did that for 3 weeks, just wrapped it up). We have community helpers and a space unit coming up for the rest of October. We have a field trip that we are taking next weekend to the Science Museum of Chicago with her homeschool group. We’ve been introducing letter sounds (she’s not a fan), we’ve been doing our alphabet review (doing a letter a day), and introducing CVC words (not a fan of that either).
We’ve done a lot of reading! ‘What will fat cat sit on’ was a favorite for Abigail.
A few of our other read-alouds were: Sheep in a Jeep, Ten Apples Up On Top, Up! Up! Up! It’s Apple Picking Time, There was a Cold Lady Who Swallowed Some Snow, worm weather, Leaves, Snow Days, etc.
For social and emotional learning we’ve been learning how to use our words to express what we feel,, we’ve been reading books like llama llama mad at mama. We also worked on some calming feel-good activities. She said the back rubbing was her favorite. 😂🙂
I’m also trying to break the thumb habit by at least reducing it to only at home. Not out in public. She’s been something else with that. I need to see other self-soothing ideas that she can gravitate to.
Extracurricular: Volleyball goes until November!
Ballet has the nutcracker recital coming up! December 17th and th 18th are the dates. I do not have show times yet. They finalize casting calls next week
Music class has a free concert they are putting on November 12th at 2pm!
Thanks for reading If you got this far!! 👍
We did alphabet clip matching , cvc word spelling, greater than or less than math, and art. 
