September 30, AO yr 1, week 3

We had a great day outside yesterday. We had a birthday party in the park for our friend M who turned 5, and all the kids (9 of them, 8 of them aged 6 and under, one who is 8) had so much fun, running around and playing together. All kinds of unstructured, imaginative play.  The afternoon warmed up more and more. It was all we could do to drag ourselves in for supper.

Today, after our breakfast and morning prayer time, we started with some "beyond free reading." Random twaddle from the library!

We read the first half of the chapter on "St Augustine of Canterbury" in Our Island Saints. We read about Pope Gregory allowing Augustine to go with his gang of 40 monks to England to convert them, after having seen fair-looking boys being sold as slaves in Rome. We have just been introduced to King Ethelbert of Kent (a heathen) and his already Christian wife Queen Bertha (she had brought a priest with her from France and she already had a tiny chapel, St Martin in their kingdom).  Fina narrated it well as we went along the story. We will finish the second half of this story next week.

On to poetry: she re-recited her three poems to me, and we read a few new ones. "The Wind" which I thought was cute and has a repeating two-line couplet at the end of each stanza, but Fina said she didn't want to learn it. We also read "Keepsake Mill," "Good and Bad Children" and "Foreign Children."  They were all too long and I myself didn't care for the content of the second and third ones. We will find something else to memorize.

Cursive: the "t"s are good. She also wrote "at" today. We also reviewed "man" and "sass." She can almost spell the words when I ask her to write them. Almost!

We read Chapter 3 of Paddle to the Sea.  She is excited about it now that the little canoe fell through the melting snow into the brook.  She narrated it well.

MUS Primer 12C and 12D. She is doing well with math. I also had her do a few pages of the Primer Activity Sheets, the entire book is free to download online. I had printed it a while back, but we only did the first 4 pages. They have sheets for Alpha and Beta as well.  Today she was able to do pages 5 through 11. It was a fun way to review the concepts, actually.


That is it for today. Thanks for reading!

September 28, AO yr 1, week 3

We are having a bit of a slower start this morning, after last night's late bedtime to see the lunar eclipse.

Fina continued working on her scarf. We need to finish it up today.

She also made this cute Canada flag with what she believes is a maple leaf that she found yesterday. I told her it isn't a maple leaf, but she cares not!

We did our morning prayer and read the Bible readings for this coming Sunday.

On to cursive. We repeated am, an, man, s, ss, ssss, sass, mass. The cursive is getting much better! So, we tackled t. And tt and tttt.  She did wonderfully with those t's. She was much less frustrated today with her cursive work. Which is great. She writes very smoothly and fluently, which I am happy about.

Let me provide a link to her fountain pen, the Lamy ABC. It really helps her keep a correct pen grip because of its shape. (This is something we are trying to work on with pencil crayons and pencils etc. She gets lazy and falls into a three finger grip often.) Apparently, it is the fountain pen that is commonly used in primary schools in Europe. I don't doubt it. Goodness knows that Europeans, in general, have much better penmanship than we do.

Next, on to poetry (at Fina's request).
Here is her "too cool for school" recitation of her two poems "Raining" and "Singing" that she has been working on the last few weeks.

We reread "My Shadow," "System," "A Good Boy," and "Escape at Bedtime." We read three new poems today: "Marching Song," "The Cow" and a two-liner "Happy Thoughts." She memorized the last one very quickly.

We got the chance to talk about whether we are as happy as kings with all the things we have. She answered an emphatic "no!"

We read Genesis 22:1-19, the story of Abraham and Isaac. She narrated it very well!

She wanted to read something else from the Blue Fairy Book and since "Cinderella, or the little glass slipper" was an optional story to "Beauty and the Beast" for AOyr 1 week 3, I thought I could tack it on as an extra. I had Fina narrate it, and she did so very well. SPOILER ALERT: the story is very nice and different than the Cinderella story as we know it. She goes to two balls and at the second ball she loses her glass slipper.  The prince's men find her, the slipper fits, she puts on the other slipper she had kept and her step-sisters beg her forgiveness. She forgives them, gives them lodgings in the palace and even finds for them two Lords of the court.

Then, we read "The Brave Three Hundred" from Fifty Famous Stories Retold. She could not narrate it at all. I gave her the "I'm very sorry you missed out on paying attention to such a wonderful story" speech and closed it up.

Rookie Mom mistake: do not do three narrations in a row! It is just too much for her. She would have gotten that story just fine. It was short and exciting!

MUS 12A and 12B.  ADDITION!!! 2 + 3 = 5. Very exciting! "Mom, is this like REAL math?"  I must say, I'm really impressed with Math-U-See. The manipulatives really work. She got the whole addition thing quite easily. She knows most of the bars by colour, and the ones she doesn't know she learns by trying. I'm already a believer!

We are in the process, with some friends, to start a monthly CM homeschooling coop. I hope to cover some of my missing items there! Maybe nature study with painting etc.  I will keep you posted as we figure something out. It is so great to have homeschooling friends locally (not just in Facebook groups, which are great, but still!)!

Off to lunch. (Fina is going to work on some Lego right now as I prep lunch.) And to finish that scarf for M. And to continue to read Peter Pan, and to play outside, and get to the Post Office, the library etc etc. What a fun day!

Oh, I had better play some Brahms while I prep lunch and she builds with Lego. I almost forgot today!

Weekend handicrafts and the moon!

We had a very fun weekend!
On Friday afternoon, we went out to play with a bunch of our friends who came and went, and we hit our 1000 hours outside goal.  1000.75 hours spent outside from November 3 2014 to September 25 2015. Under 11 months.  I am so proud of Fina (and of myself too!).

On Saturday, we went with some friends to a nearby beach (at a man-made reservoir) and we found 8 baby turtles, swimming near the shore. They were so cute, with their little tails.

No, Fina did not pick one up. The pic shows her friend T holding one. However, she did touch its shell (so did I). It was hard, just like you would imagine a turtle's shell to be.

Here she is with her friends, playing at the beach.

She also made a pinch bowl (with some help from our friend's mom, L) out of clay she gathered on the beach.

Surprisingly for MB, the weather was quite nice (though very windy) with temperatures in the high 20s and they were able to swim for a bit (though the water was cold, though not as cold as I remember Lake Ontario feeling like when I was young - your feet felt like ice cubes). For the end of September, that is pretty good!

Today (Sunday), on our way into the city and back for church, Fina worked on this handicraft.

She is making a scarf for her friend M's birthday this week, on a knitting loom. Knitting on a loom, either a straight board like this, or on a circular loom (they look like this) is really fun and easy for kids to do (compared to knitting with needles). Fina has made many a hat on her circular looms, mainly for her stuffed animal lambs. Knitting looms are also good for people with arthritis, etc.

Here is her nearly completed scarf. (It has been a joint effort between Fina and mom).  M's birthday party is on Tuesday, so we will finish it tomorrow.

In the evening, around 8pm local time, we went to the park to see the Blood Moon / Super Moon / Lunar Eclipse. Some friends met us there through the night. The kids all had so much fun running around our park in the dark. It was such a clear night that we saw so many stars, a satellite moving through the sky and quite a few falling stars as well as the eclipse. We were out for almost 2 hours.

We wanted to sketch the view, so Fina started sketching the moon before her friends arrived.

Then, this is a quick sketch she did while it was "eclipsing."

She was really too busy having fun with her friends to do more sketching than that, but I thought it was still cute!

September 25 AO yr 1, week 3

Week 3!  Wow, we have made it through two weeks already. Incredible. We have made it this far!

We read some more Peter Pan after finishing our math yesterday afternoon. We read chapter 4 and half of chapter 5. We went for a short bike ride with dad, and then Fina did another two episodes of her yoga. (Good thing, too. We had very little outside time. And please, oh please, mosquitoes, go away already!!!)

On to today. I gave her the option of working on her cursive s first or her math.  She said "poems." So, poetry it is!
Recitation: Lord's Prayer, The Apostles' Creed, and her two poems "Rain" and "Singing."
We read four new poems from our same poetry collection. She didn't want to stop.  "My Shadow," "System," "A Good Boy" and "Escape at Bedtime." We haven't found anything new to recite yet, but we will continue through the book until we find something to learn.

Fina has it in her mind that she is ready for winter, talking about making "tire sur la neige" etc and she wanted to see photos of snowflakes. So we digressed, and checked out this website that shows photos of snowflakes. If you decide to look at it, be sure to go to the last page of the slideshow. Very cool!

Then we tackled that cursive letter s again. It went much better. She was able to write "as," "sass" and "mass" today. We will continue to work on it, but we were both a little less frustrated with it today. I don't want her to feel like nothing is good enough, like a perfectionist, but yet, I need her to do her best.  Like perfect!  Very tricky to negotiate that. Just a reminder, faithful readers, we use the stickers to cover up mistakes. I think this is mostly encouraged when writing words (the idea is that you don't see the misspelled word and get the wrong spelling in your head) but it is working fine for cursive letters as well. Though she has asked "does it mean I didn't do a good job because there are so many stickers?" to which I replied "It means that you are practicing a lot!"

We read chapter 2 of An Island Story, "The Coming of the Romans." It tells of Julius Caesar coming to Britain and conquering it, though not feeling like it was a win, because he lost so many men and galleons (ships). Fina narrated it. And we put Julius Caesar in our timeline.

We read two Aesop's Fables. "The boy and the Filberts" which tells of the boy who couldn't get his hand out from the jar because he wouldn't let go of some nuts, and "Hercules and the Wagoner" that teaches us that heaven helps those who help themselves. In this second fable, the farmer's wagon gets stuck in the mud and he cries out to Hercules to help him, and the story says that Hercules actually comes and berates him for not trying to get his wagon out himself.  She narrated both short fables well.

Then, we read "Beauty and the Beast" from The Blue Fairy Book edited by Andrew Lang. There have been many discussion on various Charlotte Mason groups about these fairy tales as being too brutal for some kids, but this story was really fine, even for Fina who tends to have a dramatic response to things. There was nothing gory or brutal in it. We ended up reading the whole story (though we had intended to break it up) at Fina's insistence. I asked her to narrate back to me after a few pages and she said "Mom, you haven't read enough for me to narrate." So I kept on. I stopped maybe three times to have her narrate. And at the end, she gave me a decent summary of the overall story.  It was a fascinating fairy tale. We both enjoyed it. It is so neat to read the originals of well-loved Disney fairy tales. It is interesting to hear the differences.

We sang hymn 13E, the Holy and the Glory to God today. She is not always singing aloud, but I think it is getting better.

We finished with some MUS, doing sections 11E and 11F.

Now she is looking at the pieces of art by Corot. We looked up a photo of the Chartres' Cathedral. We got to see a detail of its rose window and Fina was quite pleased to see that. Many of you know of her affinity for stained glass windows! Here is a photo that is taken from the same angle as seen in Corot's painting.

Fun to see that low building in front of it, still standing from at least 1830 when Corot painted it.

We listened to some Brahms today, throughout our morning.

Fina said "I like homeschooling, because I get to do my school in my pjs." Funny!  I suppose we could get dressed to do our school, but it works fine like this for her. If she likes it, WONDERFUL!

Time for lunch (after she gets dressed, that is)!

September 24, AO yr 1, week 2

Yesterday afternoon, we went out to the park for a couple of hours. The sun had warmed things up nicely at that point of the day. While out there, we flew a kite for a bit. And Fina ran around playing, jumping off picnic tables and the like.  (The kite was down when I took the pic and somehow I got too involved in the kite flying to manage another pic.)

After a while, she comes to me (while I'm trying to finish reading the last half of the 6th and final volume of Charlotte Mason's work, Towards a Philosophy of Education. I'm reading the paraphrase in modern English. I had intended finishing all 6 before we began homeschooling, but that didn't happen.) and says "Mom, can't we please read Peter Pan while we are outside?"

So, I run in and grab our copy of Peter Pan (the original book by J.M. Barrie, with illustrations by Mabel Lucie Attwell. You can get it for free here. We bought a 2013 edition by Dalmatian Press at a used book sale somewhere. I see the $1.00 price scribbled in pencil on the first page.) and a fabulous made-of-denim quilt we use for outdoors (made with lots of love by my sister a few years ago. I bought denim squares at a thrift store and mailed them to her in Ontario and she made me a quilt with a water-resistant backing for outdoor use. I guess it is all my doing that she has now become an avid quilter. Correct me if I'm wrong, that was your first quilt, right CB?).

We find a lovely tree to sit under and I read chapters 2 and 3 to her.  Aren't these lovely colours?

She was listening so intently, it was quite something. There is something incredible about reading outside, lying on a blanket. Dad met us at the park after work and we walked around the path for a little while. We walked home (we live about 100 ft from this park) and Fina wasn't ready to come in yet. So she did a couple of episodes of her favourite yoga for kids out on our lawn.

I sat on our steps and read a bit more of my volume 6.  The mosquitoes started coming out at about 6pm, so we finally headed in for supper.

For those of you who know and love me, you will know that last November (November 3, to be exact), Fina and I started ourselves on a 1000 Hours Outside challenge. Basically it is a movement to get kids (and adults) outside more, rather than inside watching tv etc.  The website was started by a couple of moms (influenced by Charlotte Mason's ideas that kids should be outside for 4-6 hours a day) who wanted to counter the statistic that the average American kids watches 1200 hours of tv a year.  You can find their explanation here. Well, you will be proud to know that as of yesterday, we are 995.75 hours. And it is only the end of September! I am proud to know that we will very soon make it to our goal and I hope to greatly surpass it.  You can imagine that this isn't always easy in a Manitoba winter (or worse, a mosquito-riddled Manitoba summer). Thankfully, Fina isn't bothered by the -40C (yes, that is -40F too, for my American readers!) cold, so we did get out a lot this winter as well.

Try it yourself. Adults, kids, whatever. Even an hour a day outside is probably more that what many people are doing. It does make all the difference. I can't express how much I love it. Homeschooling is going to make this possible for us even now, during the schooling years. (Though kids do it while attending regular school as well. Their families just have to be more intentional about using non-school days, weekends, holidays, etc).

Another website and FB page that I really enjoy is http://www.activekidsclub.com/.  This is the brain-child of a Toronto (via Norway) mom who gives lots of tips and resources for spending time outside with kids, in all types of weather. (A shout out goes to my own Canadian-Norwegian friend who introduced me both to this website and the love of the outdoors with kids).  We do, as a culture, spend way too much times sitting inside (at a computer, tv, etc etc). Being out in the forest, out in a meadow, splashing through puddles, sliding down snow hills (tiny ones, this is FLAT MB after all), climbing on trees, looking at leaves, bugs, squirrels, flowers - these are activities that refresh us. We much prefer these free-play activities than scheduled extra-curricular ones.

*****
Well, time to start our day.

We did our morning prayer (and we have been doing night prayer in bed before going to sleep as well).
Fina decided to do some Handicrafts today (embroidery) before starting with her school work. She also swept the kitchen floor, and swiffered it with the dry swiffer cloths (she wanted to swiffer wet it too, but she got distracted with going upstairs to play with her doll house). We ended up not doing any school work until after lunch.

Poetry: Fina recited her two poems.  We read a new poem today, "The Land of Nod." I had thought she might like to recite it, but we have decided to wait for a "better" poem.

Burgess Birds Book, Chapter 1 "Jenny Wren Arrives." Narrated it well. I had her colour in a colouring page of a Carolina Wren, and that did not work. She, unlike most kids, didn't seem to concentrate as well while colouring. Funny!

Gen 8:13-22. Narrated the end of the flood well.

Cursive "s". Fina is still having trouble being consistent with her letter s. We wrote "as" and "sass."

So, I pulled out the old "cornmeal in a container" trick and we are working on forming the letter s with here index finger. I hope this will help. I am trying not to let her get frustrated, but she wants to do it right and just can't seem to form it properly consistently.

Yup, even in the cornmeal, she didn't really want to make an s. So she made an a.  She made some s's, but was still not happy with them, nor forming them easily the right way. We will start with the cornmeal s tomorrow.

Paddle to the Sea. We read chapter 2. She doesn't have the attachment (yet) that other kids seem to have to the story, but we are only on chapter 2. She listens to it and does narrate it.

"Bridge at Nantes." We looked at the painting and described it again.
Then, I wanted to try the second painting by our artist for the term, Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, "Chartres Cathedral."

I tried something different this time so she wouldn't get all freaked out like the first time.  We looked at it and spoke of it, and without warning I turned it over and both her and I tried recreating the basic idea of it on paper. (This probably wouldn't work with all kids, but she did well). Hers is on the right, mine is on the left. I am NOT an artist, but I thought I had better do it alongside with her.

Then we started trying to reproduce it while looking at it. Mine has a splash of colour on it.

She didn't get very far before wanting to move on and sculpt with her Thinking Putty for a bit.

We made people on our fingers.

Lastly, Fina did just a little bit of MUS, from 11C p 2  through to 11D.

We listened to Brahms a bunch of times through the day today.

***
A few things I've learned today:
- we need to slow down and repeat and repeat with the cursive. The letters a, m and n are ok, but s needs work before moving on.
- do not try homeschooling in the afternoon, unless absolutely necessary. It wasn't terrible, but it flows much more smoothly in the mornings. And now we didn't get outside, or do the other bunch of things we had done yesterday, for example. It slows us right down! (Fina also woke up at 6am this morning, instead of the 7:30 or 8 she is used to, because she had a bad dream. She went to cuddle in bed with dad to talk until after 7 when they came down. I think she is pretty done! We finished math around 4).
- keep at the artist study because Fina does have a good eye. I need to keep trying other ways of looking before moving back to the look-at-it-then-cover-it-up-and-narrate style.
- Fina doesn't work well with colouring while listening for narration. At least not now. We might try that again at a later date.

I will get the folksong in at some point. Right now, I don't want it to feel like a chore (for me or for her!) so we will come to it eventually. That, and the nature study painting with water colours. I haven't forgotten. I just need to work our schedule so we can do it.

Thanks for following our journey. If you are so inclined, please say a prayer for us. My good friend says it is a marathon, not a sprint. I can already see how right she is.

September 23, AO yr 1, week 2

We listened to some more Brahms during breakfast.

We started our schooling this morning with Session 2 of our catechism. "God cares for us." It was fine. One of the questions is to ask you how you should treat others to show God's love and she said "I asked people if the toy belonged to them, when it was abandoned on the beach."  Yes, before proceeding to take it home. That is ok, I guess.  : ) We have to keep working on that hoarder mentality!  Also, she drew her favourite part of church as being when "everybody sings and us too." Also funny, because she never wants to sing at church!

Then we took another stab at the letter s.  Fina was able to shape the letter much better today. She was very pleased with herself!  And she did ss and ssss.  And "as" as well.  It takes great concentration for her, but I'm pleased with her work.

We read and narrated Genesis 7:13-18 and she did a great job with that.

We read and she narrated "A Laconic Answer" from Fifty Famous Stories Retold. I wasn't sure if she got it (a Laconic answer is a short, brief answer. Coming from Laconia in Greece, where the Spartans were measured in their speech.  The King wants to take over their land, and the Laconians send him back the message, with just the answer "if.") She did understand it though. Fina: " They only wrote IF because they like short answers."

We looked at our map to see where Rome and Greece are (were). And we tried to learn north and south. She keeps calling north south by accident. We'll keep working at it! I'm not worried.

She asked to do poetry next. She must really be enjoying it.  Continuing through A Child's Garden of Verses. She re-recited "Rain" and "Singing."  We read a few new ones. "Where go the boats," "Auntie's Skirts" and "The Land of Counterpane." We had a chat about the Land of Counterpane and she understood that the boy was in bed because he was sick and had all his toys in bed with him. Then we together came to the understanding that counterpane is like a windowpane and he imagines he is the giant looking out over the land of counterpane.

While we were reciting, I asked her to recite the Apostles' Creed again. And we sang our hymn from last week as well as the Holy Holy Holy.  She is trying to sing more clearly, opening her mouth to pronounce.

MUS 11B - she is doing well with this. Went through 11C. She asked to listen to Zecchino d'Oro while she was doing her math. Either she's not interested in Brahms (ha), or she just wanted something more fun. Score for foreign language listening.  It is an Italian kids' choir from forever ago and every year they hold a big concert with new songs.

We read chapter 2 of Peter Pan (our current free read, so no narration is necessary, though I'm hoping she'll tell dad about it later, of her own volition!).

And we worked a bit more on her story from last week. Here is the start of Chapter 2 from last week, with her new part added on.

**********

CHAPTER 2

But Squirrel Nutkin said “where is our baseball bat and our baseball ball?”  And Jeremy Fisher said “you’re right.” And they looked together. And there was no sign of the baseball bat and the baseball ball. So they said “why don’t we just go inside?”  On the way inside, they saw a snail and they said “ hi, little snail, do you want to come live with us?” The snail nodded and said “yes, please, I’ve been looking for a home, but you better put me in a cage because maybe I’ll make slimy marks.” 

They made the cage out of hay, but then they forgot to put a window. So they cut open a space and put a glass window in it. Then the snail said “ouch” and then they looked. The snail had pricked himself on the hay. So they made it out of some flat wood instead. The snail said “thank you Jeremy Fisher and Squirrel Nutkin.”

Then Squirrel Nutkin and Jemima Puddleduck said “there is no sign of your baseball bat and baseball ball.” So JF said “shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,. They all see a sign that says “Free baseball and baseball bat here.”

**********

That is it for us today.

September 21 2015, AO yr 1, week 2

We started reading Peter Pan over the weekend. We read about half of the first chapter.

Morning prayer and breakfast done.
Our cursive letter today is s. Exciting! She did s and a few multiples. She got quite frustrated, s is a hard letter. Fina didn't get many s's she was happy with, so we will try again tomorrow.
We listened to some Brahms as we did our cursive writing.

Read and narrate Genesis 6:13-22. She did a great job with this one.

We also read "Damon and Pythias" from Fifty Famous Stories Retold. She narrated this well too.

Fina recited again the two poems she has learned.  "Rain" and "Singing."  We read another poem "A Good Play" and it was quite cute.

We read and she narrated the next Aesop Fable, "The Eagle and the Jackdaw." Of course, she liked that there was a lamb and a ram in the story. We learned about vanity.
(In the story, an eagle picks up a lamb to take to his nest. The jackdaw, seeing this, decides he wants to do the same, so he goes to a ram, but can't pick it up and gets his talons stuck in the wool. The shepherd sees the jackdaw flapping its wings and comes to free it. He clips his wings and gives the bird to his children. The children ask what kind of bird it is. The shepherd says "it is a jackdaw, but if you ask him, he will say he is an eagle." The moral: do not let your vanity overestimate your abilities.) Oh look - my own written narration. (Mom did this, not Fina.)

MUS starting at 10D through to 11A. We learned about the unit bars, from 1-9. She likes it a lot, which is good.

She recited the Lord's Prayer and the Apostles Creed. She also sang the "Holy, Holy, Holy" to me.

Now, off to the beach. It is a lovely day here today!!!

AO yr 1, week 2 continued

We didn't do any schooling today, but Fina did spend quite a while doing some drawing. Artforkidshub.  She loves this youtube channel. They have a website too.  There is an artist dad with his young daughter and they draw some of the great hits kids love. My little Ponies, Minecraft and Disney characters, along with random things.  The episodes are very well done. Fina watches them on the iPad with the volume muted and she just copies what she sees them doing.

Here is the video for Twilight Sparkle (or whoever this is!)

And here is Fina's finished product.

And dad took us to St Malo Provincial Park, where he and Fina climbed a tree.

Dad has been reading Prince Caspian to Fina. This is their second time through the Narnia series.

SEPTEMBER 18 2015, AO yr 1, week 2

Yesterday, while we were looking again at Corot's Bridge, Fina said "Maybe that is Corot with the red hat in the boat!" I thought that was cute.

We are praying our morning prayer while Fina writes "am, an and man" in cursive. She is enjoying her cursive work. She is working on keeping her letter standard in width. It is tricky. But she is trying to be smooth and even.

She recited the Lord's Prayer and the Apostles Creed.
She almost got the whole poem "Singing" recited. She will have it soon.
(This is how we recite poetry in our house!)

Listening to Brahms, doing our Math. MUS 9E through 10C. We learned about the hundreds place value. She really gets it! I'm so pleased with MUS right now!

She narrated Gen 6:5-8 very well. And then we read "Belling the Cat" from Aesop. She laughed and laughed, and it was probably her best narration ever.

She is so funny - she is shy to sing out loud. So we sang our hymn out loud (which was good) and then we sang the Holy from church. She either sang it quietly and squeakily, or out loud screeching. We will work on that. (She has been singing since she was a baby, but when asked to actually sing, she gets all shy!)

We did some handiwork today. She has been working on embroidering. Today she did this.

She continued to try reciting her two poems. She is doing a good job.

We are going out to play after lunch with our friends. We are going bike riding in the park. We *might* do some more reading this evening.

Thanks for reading!

SEPTEMBER 17 2015, AO yr 1, week 1, sort of day 5

We had a late (but very fun) night last night, so we'll see how things go this morning. She had a busy morning, playing connect four, memory (with bean bags), writing invitations to her toys for a halloween party, preparing costumes etc.

We did our morning prayer during breakfast, as we have been doing. We have been listening to more Brahms this morning as well. And she recited her "Rain" poem to me again. She has it down pat now, I think!

We have our painting out and just randomly look at it. We won't do any "focused" looking today.

We spent some time thinking about all the people we have learned about so far and added them to our Timeline. (Of course, google was a great help with dates). Our time line is very basic. Three centuries on a page, and within each century, we just note whatever we come across (without specific dates and not in any particular order).  Right now, we are keeping it in a binder. I'd like to do this as we go in the future, though I know some homeschoolers put things on their time line once a week. In some ways, that does help to refresh what we learned this week. We'll see.

Our cursive letters are "an" and "am" today. Fina wrote them very well after just a few times, so we didn't need to spend much time with cursive today.

We read Genesis 3:1-24 and she narrated it to me. It was great.

Then Fina wanted to read some new poems, "Travel," "Singing," and "Looking Forward." We will try to learn "Singing." It has two stanzas.
*****
Singing

Of speckled eggs the birdie sings
And nests among the trees;
The sailor sings of ropes and things
In ships upon the seas.

The children sing in far Japan
The children sing in Spain;
The organ with the organ man
Is singing in the rain.
*****
She has the second stanza down quite well already. She is a bit of a natural with memorization, it seems.

We sang our hymn. And recited Lord's Prayer. And the Apostle's Creed. She knows all kinds of stuff!

We read the entire chapter of "A Lesson of Faith" in Parables from Nature (though it is scheduled to be read over two weeks). She narrated that to me and dad. She did fine with it.

We had a great time of nature play this afternoon with our good friends J and J. And now she is tired (late night, early morning!) and she and dad are upstairs reading Narnia (Prince Caspian, I think?) and I suspect she will be asleep at an early time.

SEPTEMBER 16 2015, AO yr 1, week 1, sort of day 4

We took the day "off" yesterday. We went to moms group at the church in town and reconnected with all our friends after the summer. We got in 4 hours of outdoor play time (though the mosquitoes resurrected and were nuts!). We did listen to some Brahms after dinner, but that was about it.

We did morning prayer over breakfast. That is working well for us.
We are going to do some school work before story time. Today I've decided to count story time as our French foreign language time.

Started with MUS this morning, 9B part 2 (she remembered very well from Monday. Yay!!!) Place values of units and tens. I'm quite impressed! Finished to 9D.

Our next cursive letter is n. She is working hard at keeping her letters nice and even (not too wide, not too squished.) It is tricky, but she is trying.

As we walk to the library, I'm going to see if she still remembers her poem "Rain." I had better re-read it myself before we leave!

*****
Well, she recited it perfectly, before we had even made it out of our courtyard!

Story time was good. Now back to making a perfect "n."

We read "The Sword of Damocles" from 50 Famous Stories Retold and she was able to narrate it back. Though she is very literal and didn't really get the moral of the story. But still, it was good.

Then to our Aesop Fables for this week. I read "The Wolf and the Kid" and she was able to narrate it. Then I wanted to read "The Tortoise and the Ducks" but she remembered it from when we read it in late spring. And she told me the whole story!!! Yay!!!

Then we looked at our Bridge at Nantes painting and just talked about it. Fina said the light and the sun made her want to go outside, so we did, and we continued to look at it, sitting on our neighbour's porch in the sun. Our side is shady right now and it was a bit chilly, and she was eating a "milksicle," which made it feel colder.
Since I had my iPad, to look at the painting, I was able to do a few more readings and narration. I read her a few more poems, "Pirate Story," "Foreign Lands," and "Windy Nights." I also reread all our poems to date. Then, I read her Rudyard Kiplings' "How the Whale Got His Throat" from Just So Stories. She narrated that back to me very well.

Then we came back in and finished Lesson 1 of our catechism. We looked at this painting of St Vincent de Paul and talked about how we care for God's creation by helping others. (The catechism program comes with a set of art prints for every lesson. I don't have access to the art prints, but thankfully they have a list of them on their website, and I think I'll be able to find them all as we go, thanks to Google!

So, that is our day for today.
I was able to cross a few more things off of my list. We aren't quite finished with week 1 yet.

Still to come are:
-more cursive work
-more math
-more Brahms
-Genesis 3:1-24 read and narrate
-"A Lesson of Faith" from Parables from Nature. We have to read and narrate the first half of that chapter.
-we haven't done any folksong. And I also want to do "De Colores" in Spanish as folksong / foreign language (two birds with one stone).
-we need to continue with our hymn
-we haven't tried nature study yet (finding something and painting it with watercolour. We might not start that yet).
-For "free reading" from the AO list, I have the book Peter Pan sitting near dad on the table. So I hope they get a chance to start it this week at some point.
-we haven't done any handicrafts yet either. We can wait on that too.

Actually, we somehow made it this far in week 1, with just doing 4 days. I thought I'd need a few more days to finish, but one day should do it.

I'm actually surprised! Thanks for reading this blog. It is helping me a lot to keep a record of what is going on and what is still to come! Now off for lunch and hopefully some more time outside to play.

Oohhhh, and now she is washing dishes. Home Ec! (Now, water everywhere. Home Ec lesson #2 will be with a rag to dry the floor! Ha!)

CONTINUATION OF DAY 3

Artist Study - we tried a bit of our first one on Friday, but Fina was very stressed out, trying to memorize (by repeating) things while she was looking at the art (so she wouldn't forget).  Think "Red hat, tree, bridge, house" muttered over and over again.  That wasn't the point. So, this evening, she decided she wanted to paint her own version of the painting. Here is her project.

Not exactly a faithful reproduction (cue the pink lips and heart), but I was pleased that she took the initiative to start such a project after supper. She did look at Corot's The Bridge at Nantes while she was painting. Sort of!

What I'd like to do next is for us to just look at the painting and talk about what we see (without the stress of covering it up). But I am happy she took a stab at painting her own version in watercolour.

In other news, at supper Fina was able to retell many of the things we learned today to dad. That was VERY encouraging. She even recited the  "Rain" poem (not perfectly, but she knew it much better than I did!) for him.

SEPTEMBER 14 2015, AO yr 1, week 1, sort of day 3

Over the weekend, Fina continued her story. We went back and called the first part Chapter 1. This new part starts Chapter 2

*****

But Squirrel Nutkin said “where is our baseball bat and our baseball ball?”  And Jeremy Fisher said “you’re right.” And they looked together. And there was no sign of the baseball bat and the baseball ball. So they said “why don’t we just go inside?”  On the way inside, they saw a snail and they said “ hi, little snail, do you want to come live with us?” The snail nodded and said “yes, please, I’ve been looking for a home, but you better put me in a cage because maybe I’ll make slimy marks.”

*****

No idea why she had baseball on the brain, but still!

We've had a bit of a slower start this morning, lingering over breakfast and our morning prayer.

We are doing a slightly tweaked AO year, by replacing Trial and Triumph (a little too brutal, a little too anti-Catholic for our likings) with two books by Amy Steedman. On the advice of some wise CM moms, namely Celeste at joyouslessons.blogspot.ca, I'm replacing the first 24 weeks with Our Island Saints, one chapter every two weeks. And the last term will by In God's Garden, by Steedman as well.

Today, we did Chapter 1 of Our Island Saints, the story of St Alban. It follows our history as it is a Roman living in early Britain. Fina narrated it. We did the whole chapter (though it was intended to be spread over two weeks). She did ok with it. I'm still trying to figure out what works best. I did large chunks and I think she got it, just not with much detail. More of a basic overview. I'm satisfied with that for now.

Part of the fun of homeschooling, is that we get to read our books like this:

And this was what she made with her thinking putty while I was reading:

Then we did some foreign language study, with our Richard Scarry book again. I read "La gallinella rossa" in Italian, then translated the whole thing into English, then I reread it in Italian. Fina chose the story because she knows it and thinks it is funny that no one wants to help the hen until it is time to eat.

We continued to read from our poetry book. We read a new poem, "Rain" and Fina is trying to memorize it. She almost has it down. There are four lines. She starts by stating the title "Rain."

Here is the poem:

*****

The rain is raining all around,

It falls on field and tree,

It rains on the umbrellas here,

And on the ships at sea.

*****

She enjoyed trying to learn it. We will try it again. She ALMOST has it!

Being 11:00 already, I decided she should do an episode of her yoga. The newest episode, which is new to us as well, is Alan the Camel from cosmickids.com. I love this yoga for kids, and Fina does too. Here she is in a pose:

(And I got to work on this blog and did some meal prep while she did her yoga).

Catechism - we got our catechism book from church on the weekend. Finding God grade 1 by Loyola Press. It looks good. We'll try to do a bit every day. There are 25 lessons plus items specific to the liturgical year, so we will basically do one a week. They even have a homeschool section, the At-Home Edition, so I can do it without the teacher's guide. We just bought the student book.  

We did up to page 5 of the first lesson.

Cursive: "am"- She learned how to write mamma. That works for me!

For those of you who are interested in how I'm doing cursive, I'm using this from Don Potter. One lesson a day so far.  He got his ideas from Samuel L Blumenfeld. We are just using paper with a dotted middle line (I got it from ablesideonline.org, it is the large line) and it is working well so far, without other workbooks or anything.

MUS to 9B page 1. Learning place values isn't easy, but she is trying.

Then she wanted to build with the blocks a bit, so she is doing that now.

Time for lunch. 12:45.  A lot of hard work today. We are still trying to get into the routine of maximum attention instead of dilly-dallying. Things are a bit slow just because we stop for this and that question. We will keep working on that for sure.

She did well today, all in all.

STORY PART 3

Then they said that Squirrel Nutkin had found some nuts.  And Squirrel Nutkin said “I’ll bring these home. Do you have a bag?” “I have one,” said Jeremy Fisher. “OK,” said Squirrel Nutkin. They said that they saw a bear so Squirrel Nutkin said “run for your life!” and they ran as fast as they could. And they got to the house just in time. They reached Squirrel Nutkin’s hole, so they went in there and played checkers. And they peaked their heads out and saw that it was raining. So they said “how about we splash in the puddles.” So they got their rainboots, rainpants, raincoat and rainhood. And they said “why don’t we look out the window?” And Squirrel Nutkin noticed that it wasn’t raining. So they all said together “How about let’s go get our baseball mitts and play baseball?” So they did.

SEPTEMBER 11 2015, AO yr 1, week 1, sort of day 2

I suspect it will take us more than a week of schooling to get through week 1.

We started this morning with breakfast and then listening to morning prayer while Fina coloured a bit and I did some food prep. "Ora et labora" or whatever, work and pray (or do both at the same time, in my case). It works for me.
F emptied the dishwasher (ish). Yay for Montessori type of "learn to do things around the house!" We continue to have Brahms on in the background as we get ready to start.

I won't bring up her creative writing unless she does.  Though we will continue it, I'm sure.

We are going to start with bible and narration today. Gen 2:7, 20-25. (That went better).

Then to finish reading and narrating the Albion and Brutus story, Ch 1 from "An Island Story" - our history spine for the year. (That went well. She doesn't have it completely down pat, but she is trying. She tends to remember only the last sentence I read before the narration, but she is working on it. We looked up Great Britain on the map.

Now she wanted to write, and when I said, ok our next cursive, she said "no my story." But I have convinced her to wait on that.

Our next cursive is m. After some work at getting all the lines of the m down to the bottom, the cursive m and mmmmm are both good.

I played and sang our hymn again. CBW III 13E "Blessed be the God of Israel."

I'm hoping to start geography today with Ch 1 from "Padde to the Sea."  A cool book about a little carving of a canoe that goes through the Great Lakes all the way east to the Atlantic. We'll look at the map etc as we go. Fina already knows her continents, but we will review those first to see how this North American tale fits in the globe.
***
I broke it up in small chunks and it was a bit like pulling teeth narrating it. This whole narration thing is going to take some work. She has been used to devouring books, but very attentive listening and retelling is hard.  We coloured in Lake Superior on a map of the Great Lakes we are using for this. This is where the story starts.

After we finished the chapter, I asked her to tell me the whole story we just read. And she gave me an EXCELLENT narration of the whole thing. I wish I would have recorded it.  Maybe she'll do better with the big picture? I'm confused. I'll try a big chunk for our narration next time.

Recitation of the Lord's Prayer. Fine.

MUS up to  8E.

Re-read the same three poems from yesterday. Plus a 4th, "Young Night-Thought"

She is doing ok, but she is getting tired. I'd like to break it up somehow, but I don't want it to take us all day. We'll see about maybe doing yoga in the middle?  It is 11:30 now and we started at 9:15.

And now she continued her story:
*****

The Mushroom Stool Cafe had booths to sit in, and the tables were made out of mushrooms and the benches were made out of broken down logs. They got fried bugs and ate them.  They went out and walked home.  Squirrel Nutkin said “where is Jeremy Fisher?” Tom Kitten said “maybe Jeremy Fisher is behind the broken down log” or “behind the bush”, included Jemima Puddleduck. So they looked behind the bush and, sure enough, there was Jeremy Fisher, right behind the bush, like Jemima Puddleduck said. But Jeremy Fisher said “wait a second, where is Squirrel Nutkin?” And, sure enough, there was Squirrel Nutkin, behind the tree, in the hole.  He said “I’m stuck.” And they pulled and pulled and pulled and pulled and pulled and pulled and pulled and PULLED. And “pop” went Squirrel Nutkin, like a cork stopper out of a bottle.

*****

Do you notice a trope? Just like oral transmission of stories. She keeps using the same phrases, the same structure. It is quite amusing. I'm going to encourage her to make something other than this getting lost and being found happen next!

Thanks for reading!

First day of homeschooling Part 3 FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Now we did facetime with my parents and my dad read Fina a story she loved from when she was little, in Italian. The gingerbread man, by Richard Scarry. He read it twice. And sang her "Tu vuoi far l'americano" a song she recently discovered. So that was fun!

Here is hi-tech, long-distance learning.

My dad and Fina.

First day of homeschooling PART 2

So, now we read three poems from A Child's Garden of Verses: Bed in Summer, A Thought, and At the Sea Side. We read them a few times each. She enjoyed them.

I checked her MUS - it was all done very well. Just a flipped 6 I found.

I tried having her narrate Genesis 1:26-31, but that didn't go over well. I think she has had enough (and me too). I should do the Bible narration first next time.

It was a decent day, I think.  A little light, but that is ok too. We should probably take it slow the first while.  She did such a good narration with the first one, I want to be sure to give her the right space where she can do more than one a day.

This is NOT easy. Considering we have never done anything structured, she did well. I did have to prod a fair bit to keep her on task, but I'm assuming (and hoping) that gets better. She is motivated. The cursive demonstrated that to me for sure.

We never did get that recess time she was asking for. So we are going to go out for a bit now and eat when we get back.

PS I guess something did stick. She is singing "All Creatures of our God and King" from morning prayer this morning.

FINA'S FIRST DAY OF HOMESCHOOLING

Oh my! Here we are.
Fina's friends started school yesterday, so she decided she would like to start school as well. Our family is homeschooling in the Charlotte Mason method, using the free Amblesideonline.org curriculum. Fina turned 6 in April and we have done some MUS (Math-U-See, our math curriculum) already and regular-life learning and lots of outdoor nature play. She is a precocious child, loved by all (with a bit of an independent streak in her)!

I'm her mom. I ran around all last evening pulling together the things I've been gathering, collecting, linking, downloading over the last year. I am still reading CM's 6th and final volume on her method of education (I meant to have them all finished before we started), but I will continue reading it as we begin. All 6 volumes are available for free from here, in the original and in a modern English version. I'm reading the modern one, here.


8:24am. She finally woke up! The joys of homeschooling. Her friends are already on the bus! Here is dad and Fina's first day of school pic (dad is a professor at Providence University College and today was his first teaching day of his 8th year). She was still asleep when he left.  In our bed. She woke up at 3:30 (I suspect she was excited about school, and possibly cold, as the temps in southern MB Canada were about 5 celsius overnight).

After some fussing because I had erased her whiteboard drawings to put this on it

We finally got down to breakfast at 9am, while listening to morning prayer on divineoffice (my new fave. We can respond but I don't have to read it all aloud myself).

Next, our first cursive lesson, the letter a. One the white board, and with my homemade glitterglue tactile letters.

So, that was a bit tricky for a few minutes, but then she got the hang of it, on the white board. She was very proud of herself and we drew a box around it and she added "a little green S" so we would know it was hers, and not mine!

Now, on lined paper with her Lamy ABC fountain pen on our home made slant board (a 3 inch binder with our clipboard resting right on it. Right now we have no need to glue or velcro it on). She did a great job with the letter a!!!

For those of you who know her, this is her typical "I made a mistake" face! We covered it with a sticker and moved on.

I almost forgot to try multiple connected As. And, who didn't see this happening, her fountain pen ran out of ink. So, it took me 5 minutes to refill it (it has a bladder, and I've never filled one like that. I meant to have dad do it last night, just in case!) She made a lovely line of connected 'a's.

Yikes, 9:47.

Our Island Story
Ch 1 - 1.5 pages, she narrated very nicely about Neptune, Albion, the mermaid and her island.

Now, she wants to write a book, and for me to type it. So we will try that for a few minutes.

Oh my, this is quite something today. First she wants to eat a carrot, because she is a baby bunny named "Lily" who is hungry and whose feet are cold, (go get slippers), then she gets the Beatrix Potter book to look at what her character could look like, etc etc. Oh, the creative process!

In the mean time, I put on Brahm's "Variations on a Theme by Haydn. op 56a" so we can do our composer study as she writes.

Here is what she wrote:
******

Once upon a time, there was a little squirrel and his name was Squirrel Nutkin. And he was supposed to meet with Jeremy Fisher and Tom Kitten for lunch.  And they met Jemima Puddleduck on the way, and they asked her to come along with them.  But Jeremy Fisher said “where are we going for lunch?” Tom Kitten said “We’re going to the Mushroom Stool Cafe.”  But Jemima Puddleduck got lost on the way and Tom Kitten noticed and said “where is Jemima Puddleduck?” Jeremy Fisher thought they should look behind the tree. And, sure enough, there was Jemima Puddleduck, right behind the log. Then, Jeremy Fisher said “wait a second, where is Tom Kitten?” and Jemima Puddleduck said “how about you look in that broken down log?” And, sure enough, there was Tom Kitten, in the log, stuck. So they had to pull him and pull him and pull him and pull him, until he went “pop” like a cork bottle. And then, they walked to the Mushroom Stool Cafe.

The Mushroom Stool Cafe had booths to sit in, and the tables were made out of mushrooms and the benches were made out of broken down logs. 

******

Now she wanted to illustrate a picture to go along with this part of the story. Now I've lost her to drawing for a bit, I think.

Here is her drawing.

We sang through CBWIII 13E "Blessed be the God of Israel" which is the Canticle of Zachariah. We are using it as our hymn study as it is part of morning prayer. I sang it through twice while Fina had a snack.

MUS Primer, section 5C through 6F on her own. I'm setting the timer for 10 minutes. She says she will want to do more than that. (She ended up doing 20 minutes)

I'd still like her to do her yoga, we have to do a bible reading and a poem.  Also, I think I'll try facetiming my mom to do our foreign language study for the day. We are going to read a story in Italian that she loved when she was little.

And maybe the first artist study. We are looking at 6 works of art by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot this term, as per the AO schedule for 2015-2016.

Our first painting is The Bridge at Nantes. 

We'll see if we get to that today. The idea is to look at it for a few minutes, then look away and describe what we remember seeing in it. We repeat the same piece of art a few times per week for two weeks, covering 6 different pieces by the artist in our 12 week term.

I'm going to try posting this blog for now. I may have part 2 later on in the day.