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!)