October 30, AO year 1, week 7

Fina is sick AGAIN. She didn't actually get completely over her cold from a few weeks ago and she has one again. Yuck!  Although she said she was too sick for school, I was able to convince her!

We did our morning prayer together and listened to some Brahms. During breakfast we listened to some Zecchino d'oro kids' songs in Italian. (She has been requesting this a lot lately. I don't know if it is too counter-balance the Brahms or what!  And she often asks what a certain line means etc. So I am happy about that.)

We finished reading The Velveteen Rabbit. It was very nice. I had never read that story, though it is so well-known in pop culture.

For math, she finished up 18D, E and F (adding 10s). I have never seen math be so smooth for her!!!

We read a new poem "Nest eggs." Cute, but a bit long to memorize.

We continued with her cursive letter b - also so wonderfully done. She even figured out how to write an l after b in blast by herself. without me showing her!!! And she somehow thought of writing Alabama, because we had written bam. And, of course, we do know the letters, so I wrote the uppercase A and she wrote the rest.

Then we read the first half of the chapter about St Patrick in Our Island Saints. We looked on the map to see where Scotland and Ireland are. She narrated it quite well. It was interesting. We heard the story of how he would use the shamrock to explain the Trinity.

We looked at our fourth painting by Corot, The Letter. We talked about the difference between a portrait and a self-portrait.  And she described what she saw in the painting. (We did it with the print visible. It seems to work better for us for now. We will see next week at our co-op, if we cover it up and other kids are remembering things they have seen, that might help her. Her competitiveness should help!)

We finally read chapter 3 from The Burgess Bird Book and listened to the song of a little sparrow on youtube to go along with it. She enjoys those stories.

October 29, AO year 1, week 7

Last night we read from our free-read list: St George and the Dragon as well as half of The Velveteen Rabbit.

Fina did a lot of drawing this morning, from our favourite youtube channel, artforkidshub.com. As I have said before, I just pop it on (with the volume off) and Fina follows along and draws with the dad and daughter team. So much fun!

We listened to some Brahms through breakfast.

We did our morning prayer together to start our homeschooling day.

Fina wanted to start with math. So, lesson 18, adding 10s.  She is really having a hard time concentrating. She seriously wanders off in her mind in the middle of writing a number, like halfway through writing the 6 of 60, she just stops!  GAH!!!  We did 18A-D. She understands it. It really is about making it be a more pleasant experience for the both of us.

We read the story of "Horatius at the Bridge" and she narrated it well. We looked up where the Tiber River is in Rome, and where the Etruscans came from on the map.  We also saw a couple of paintings of Horatius at the bridge (thank you google).

We also read two Aesop Fables "The Lion and the Mouse" and "The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf." She narrated each of them very well.

She made a mess with the Thinking Putty she was playing with while I read to her, so now I am having her do an episode of her yoga while I clean the couch up.  Grrr!

We continued working on her cursive "w" and we even learned a new letter, the letter b.  We have written bat and ball and what and wax. She is doing well with her letters. She knows which letter is which, so I am happy about that. And she is also good at remembering how the certain letters are connected together.

She recited her poems to me as well as the Apostle's Creed.  We read a new poem, "Night and Day."

So, I'm done for today!!!  What a little stinker she can be sometimes! Seriously, today's frustrations have not been about schooling, but about parenting.  Sometimes I think I must be nuts to school at home. But I love it, (and so does Fina) and we will stick with it! She drives me a bit nuts, though!

Thanks for reading about our frustrating day!

October 28, AO year 1, week 7

We finished session 16 in our math on Tuesday morning.  Next we will be adding 10s.

Did our morning prayer together. And we did a couple of puzzles before breakfast.

We are listening to Brahms as we are working on our cursive letters! Her "w" is getting better and she also wrote "wa" and "ww." I hadn't even realized that there are different ways of connecting the "w" to what comes after it, depending on that second letter.  No wonder cursive isn't easy to learn!

The black pen is mom's. The blue is Fina's work.

Read and narrated Genesis 41:15-49, 53-57. Joseph and the Pharoah's dreams of 7 cows and 7 ears of wheat.

She practiced reciting "The Cow" properly and loudly in preparation for our first CM Co-op meeting next week (with our friend E and her kids S and E, and our friend L with her kids T and S). She did a good job with it today. She recited all her other poems and we read two new poems "Armies in the Fire" and "The Little Land."

We read chapter 4 form Our Island Story, "How Caligula conquered Britain and How Caractacus Refused to be Conquered." The story (I believe it is a legend) of Caligula not actually conquering Britain, but bringing his soldiers to the coast of France, having them dressed in the war attire, and ordering them to pick up hundreds of sea shells (that they would say were their trophies of war) and having them pretend to have conquered Britain, and then turning them back home was quite hilarious to both Fina and me!

October 26, AO year 1, week 7

We started the day by finishing the last two chapters of Peter Pan.  We both enjoyed it immensely.
We listened to some Brahms this morning as well.

Note to self: do not do free reading in the morning before school starts! She found it very hard to concentrate after that.

Cursive letter w. We had a few tears. She is so stubborn. And it really isn't that hard and she is so good at it. It is frustrating for her to learn a new letter. I'm sure it is my fault (perfectionism)!

Fina recited her poetry to me and we read a new poem "The Land of Story-Books."

Then we read chapter 6 from Paddle to the Sea. It is still hard for her to give much of a narration. But she likes it. I should let her give a one-sentence narration for the chapter. Because she gets it. She just can't recount the details. She gets the action, for sure.

We watched the "Log Driver's Waltz" vignette from the NFB of Canada.  This is one of my favourites from my childhood. It showed us how they had spikes on their shoes and how they use their poles to drive the logs. The only thing missing from Paddle is that you don't get to see the sawmill itself. I forgot how it starts with black and white footage of real log-drivers!

Then we took our first foray into the wonderful world of Shakespeare today. We read "A Midsummer Night's Dream" as retold by E. Nesbitt.  It was really good. I have never seen Fina laugh so hard as when I read the following descriptive paragraph about Puck:

"Puck was the spirit of mischief. He used to slip into the dairies and take the cream away, and get into the churn so that the butter would not come, and turn the beer sour, and lead people out of their way on dark nights and then laugh at them, and tumble people's stools from under them when they were going to sit down, and upset their hot ale over their chins when they were going to drink."

Against CM recommendations, I reread her the paragraph a few times. She laughed and laughed!

I think we should make cut out dolls for the people and see if we can recreate the story. It is a little confusing (even for me) with all those names, but she certainly understood the gist of the story.

It has been a long morning, so I told her we could skip math for now. Fina said "Skip math? You mean skip counting?" And she recited 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20.  All on her own!!! So, there you go!!! And now she is singing it around the house, and against my belief, she knows the non-number lines of the song as well.

All in all, a good start to week 7!

We just reread The Odyssey by Gillan Cross for the second time. It is on loan to us by our good friend L and her kids. Fina just loves it and asked if we could buy it at some point.  I see Cross has written a kid's version of The Illiad as well, I should look into getting it (and then we could return the favour to our friends and loan it to them).

We are almost finished reading Peter Pan (from our free-reading list).  We got to the point where Tinker Bell drinks the poison to save Peter and we really thought she was going to die.

SPOILER ALERT:  She doesn't die!!! It was well written. Dad happened to be in the same room while I was reading it, and he also gasped, thinking that was the end of Tink.

Fina is really enjoying Peter Pan, though I think many of the fighting scenes and descriptions are quite over her head. She just listens attentively all the same.

Fina and dad went out to a soccer game yesterday afternoon. It was a lovely and sunny (though chilly) day. They had a lot of fun (I think!)

Oh, and yesterday I picked up this half completed Knot-a-Quilt kit at our local, very friendly, crafty / collectibles / "re-purpose and recycle stuff to make cool stuff" shop, The Artist Pivot. (We love Kim, the owner!)  And Fina got into it right away last night. Essentially, there are fleece squares with this little fringe all around them. You take two of the fringe strips and double knot them together. And you keep doing it around and around.

This is one she started.

This gives you a better idea of what it is and how the knotted-fringe looks.

She thinks she is going to make little quilts for her dolls and possibly some for her friends as well. Christmas presents? We'll see. Anyway, she set up a quilting corner behind her bedroom door and said that this morning before coming down (if her glowing clock was not yet glowing, which tells her she is allowed to actually come out of her room!) she would work on her quilt. Well, at 7:20, 20 minutes before her glowing clock glows, I heard her bedroom door slam (at least she shut it to not wake us up with the bright light) so I guess she is working on it.

(Wait, she might not be that considerate. She MIGHT have shut her door because she needed to get in behind there to her quilting corner!)

She has been at it for 40 minutes already! Without coming downstairs!!!

UPDATE: this is what she was working on in the car on the way to the city today.

Does she look happy or what?!?!

October 23, AO year 1, week 6

Morning prayer, some listening to our Italian kids' choir songs during breakfast and morning play time. (Read, while mom tackles these pumpkins!) And we listened to some Brahms.

Fina recited all her poetry and we read a new poem "Block City." We are still in search of one that is recitable.

We started lesson 17 of her math. Skip counting by 2s, up to 20. As soon as we started the video portion of the lesson, she had me stop it, saying that she knows how to do this. And she proceeded to count "2, 4, 6, 8, 10." I was kind of floored. She says we learned it when we started our homeschooling, but I myself don't remember that!  At any rate, she  now knows almost the whole thing. Sometimes she gets mixed up between 14, 16 and 18. They have a cute song you can learn "two four / six eight  / ten twelve / fourteen / sixteen / eighteen / twen-ty!..."  She did really well with this. We will continue with skip counting (prepares us for multiplication!)

For her cursive work, she learned the letter l. It needs a bit more work, but she is doing well.

We were elbow deep in pumpkin here today (muffins, gnocchi overnight oats, soup, etc!) after our pumpkin patch run yesterday, so we have yet to read a chapter from the Burgess Bird Book. We will try to do that this weekend.

We reviewed some other things as well, and read some library books. It was a good end to our week.
Now we are heading out to splash in the rain!

October 22, AO year 1, week 6

We listened to a bit of Brahms through breakfast. Then we did our morning prayer together this morning.

Then on to cursive. We wrote a bunch of words using the letters we already know.
and, sand, hand, add, had, Samantha, tax, "." and "?"
She is doing a great job!
I like that I am telling her the letters to write, or I sometimes write them in upper case print and she is able to figure out what letter it is.  (Rather than something where she sees the cursive and copies below. I feel like this method is showing me that she can not only form the actual letter, she knows what letter it is).

We read the readings for Sunday. We did session 4 of our catechism book. We learned about the trinity (and had some interesting discussions: "if Jesus is God, then someone HAS seen God. His disciples" etc.)  Fina enjoyed it today.

Fina finished up 16E and 16F of her math. She is doing well. We are going a bit slowly yet, but it is fine!

In the afternoon, we made it out to a pumpkin patch (that a farmer isn't going to harvest) and picked out a bunch of free pumpkins. The evening was spent scooping some of them out and roasting them. It was so much fun!

A prairie pumpkin patch!

a cute little worm digging in

We realized, late in the evening, that we did NO POETRY at all today. I think that is a first for us. (Though, she did proceed to recite some of her poems to dad over dinner!)

Some random thoughts, my philosophical side (not really!)

Before we start school today, I wanted to share some random thoughts.

We use predominantly ebooks (for convenience, for portability, for price!). Sometimes, though, I think she is missing some connections by reading a chapter a week from some random book. For example, she is really enjoying Fifty Famous Stories, but I don't think she gets that each of the episodes we have read is from that book. The tangible book would allow her to make connections with other chapters in that same book. I often will preface my reading with "this story is from _____ book. Remember the other stories we read in there, like _____ and _____." I'm not about to change to print books right now, but I completely understand the arguments for and against ebooks.

We are starting to get into the groove of homeschooling. I am still unable to properly include the feast subjects at this time, but I know it will come. I am glad she like recitation of poetry, so we do do a lot of that. And we have tried to do some artist study (though not as thoroughly as I'd like). We do listen to our composer. But we haven't done much in the way of hymns, folksongs (yes, I have a couple of music degrees. I'm not sure why I am resisting!). Our handicrafts aren't scheduled, though they do happen. I really want to do more routine foreign language work (yes, I am fluent in two other languages. Again, it shouldn't be that hard for me to do).  And we still haven't delved in to nature study with actually drawing / painting (though I'm hoping our soon-to-start CM co-op will help me with some of these.)  I don't know. I feel like she is still little and I want to give her as much free time as I can. We are continuing to work on diligence and my hope is that once the work goes more quickly and smoothly, we will have more time left over for these feast subjects.  I'm trying to be patient with myself. It is just easier to do things that are really scheduled (by AO) like this chapter, and that chapter, and math and cursive. I end up privileging those things when I have a time crunch. If I had 10 kids, or even 2, I would have to be way more organized! I really admire moms who homeschool (or parent for that matter) large families.

On the flip side, I am very happy with how things are going. Fina is enjoying herself. She is learning a lot. We are coming into contact with a great many things. And she is really quite interested and invested in what is going on. I am very thankful. I just know things could be a lot worse!

I am also grateful to have a supportive husband, both supportive in terms of the schooling and in terms of going to regular work so that Fina and I are able to live this life. I know not everyone has this opportunity, so I really appreciate him for that. (Goodness knows, Fina and I are not always easy to live with!)

And I am grateful for good friends who "get me" and are on this homeschooling journey with me, especially L. And N. And E. And all of them! Last week, I set up a facebook group for a few of us (I actually know all of us in person, one of my friends lives in Wpg so the other local moms don't know her personally) to share thoughts, ideas, encouragement etc regarding homeschooling. It is nice to have a place you can go to, at any time of the day or night, to share with others. I would never call any of them up on the phone (those days are pretty much gone for me), but facebook gives me instant replies (at their convenience, which is usually pretty instantly!). So that is just a wonderful thing.

I am also so thankful for my non-homeschooling friends.
J, if you are reading this, you are an inspiration to me in many ways. And Fina and I really enjoy our little adventures. Today we are going to a farmer's field not far from here to pick free pumpkins. Like a trip to the pumpkin patch without the price tag.  Who else would we do that with!?!?  Exciting!

And to L., a young mom who is juggling kindergarten for her oldest, day care for her toddler, and full time schooling for herself. Another inspiring person for sure.

I have written various times about the outdoor play group we started 3 weeks ago. It is going very well so far. It is just a blessing to have like-minded moms who have really cool kids. Fina loves her friends. She really does. We are happy to play with some kids that we know but with whom we have never really spent time.

We are so blessed to have friends like this. I'm not sure we'd have so many people who care about us if we were in a big city. We have such a close-knit little group here. It is incredible, beyond words.

And I am grateful for you, my faithful blog readers. This is mostly a journalling and record-keeping tool for me at this time, but it warms my heart to know that I have people who care to read about what we are doing.

I got a nice note from my dear friend N who noticed that I didn't post my blog entry til much later in the evening (I usually post as soon as we are done, by early afternoon for sure), saying that she had been checking for it and waiting for it. It is so nice to actually have people caring about what I am doing. Love you, my dear friend.

Time to get started with my day. I will start another entry for our school day.

October 21, AO year 1, week 6

Fina has been asking to listen to Zecchino D'Oro (an Italian kids' choir that we have always listened to since she was small) whenever we're just doing whatever. Her longing for foreign language study? I'm glad she has been asking for it herself. She knows many of the songs and lyrics. And she has recently been asking me what a certain line means. So that is great.

We had a great time yesterday at our outdoor play group. It was a little chilly and cloudy, but we won't complain just yet! It was still warm enough!!!

We started school this morning. Fina recited her poems to me, then I reread "The Unseen Playmate" and "My Ship and I." We read three new poems: "My Kingdom," "Picture-Books in Winter" and "My Treasure." Still nothing new to learn. She says she will tell me when she hears one she really likes.

I read and she narrated "Cornelia's Jewels" from Fifty Famous Stories. It is a cute story. Her jewels are her sons, not worldly jewels.

We read and Fina narrated Genesis 37:1-4, 11, 28B (Joseph and his coat of many colours). She wanted to hear the whole story so I pulled out The Jesus Storybook Bible and we read the whole thing. (I was going to read it straight out of the bible, but it spans various chapters and there is all kinds of stuff in there I wasn't ready to tackle in one story. See Genesis 38!

Paddle to the Sea - chapter 5. I don't know why she has such a hard time narrating from Paddle. She loves the story and we talk about what is going on etc., but her narrations are very difficult for this. Much more so than for other stories. Maybe it is because it is so descriptive and not much actually happening... Has anyone else noticed this with this book? She definitely looks forward to reading it. She just gives a really shallow narration of it.

We finished reading our latest chapter of Peter Pan.
We took our lunch outside and spent an hour playing in the park.
Then we went to the library, because mom had to cover the circulation desk for the afternoon.

Fina did some scanning of books.

She listened to her Paddington audiobook, she flipped through books.
She also did some math

And she did her cursive work. We learned the letter "d" and were able to write dad!

Her d's were very good, very quickly.

After the library, we spent another hour and a bit out at the park, and were joined by her little friend K for a short while.  Over a week ago, the kids found a tire in the park (who knows!) and have since spent HOURS playing with it. Even Fina by herself, before K came, was rolling it around the park and playing with it in various ways, including dragging it up the play structure and rolling it down the slide.

A tire?!?!? More exciting than one would think.

October 19, AO year 1, week 6

Well here we are at week 6, the last week in the first half of the first term of the rest of her life!

We prayed our morning prayer together. We started with our cursive. She is really enjoying it right now. We have learned that sentences start with an upper case and end with punctuation. We have learned the period and the question mark. We have written our first sentence "Sam sat." and our first question "Sam sat?" I wanted Fina to practice all her cursive letters, so I wrote them in upper case print for her to "translate" into cursive, and she asked me if she could write a word that used all the letters we know so far.  Well, I couldn't find one that uses all, but I did find one that uses all but "s" and "x" -- Samantha! Very exciting, for she had a little friend Samantha who used to live across the street.

"Why the Sea is Salt" from The Blue Fairy Book. She narrated it back quite well, after one reading, straight through without stopping.

Math. 15F, 16A and 16B. She is "getting it" much better now. At least we aren't getting frustrated any more. We will continue to work on 0-20.  She is very quick at knowing her doubles, 1+1=2, 2+2=4, 3+3=6, 4+4=8 and 5+5=10. So that is great!  She doesn't always need to use the manipulatives, so that is great as well.

Poetry: Fina recited all her poems to me. We re-read "The Unseen Playmate" and read for the first time "My Ship and I." She loves poetry. She really does.

We spent a few minutes doing our artist study.  We looked and talked about our painting, "A View near Volterra" and then I covered it up and she told me all she could remember. She did very well with this today.  Neither of us could remember the horse rider's coat colour (blue). When we looked at the painting again, around the bend on the path there is what mom thinks is another human, and what Fina thinks is a bear. "The horse and rider are going to be surprised when they turn the corner and hear a loud rrrooooaaaarrrr!" she says.

Art influences writing (see the continuation of Fina's story).

She has finally asked to write more of her story. Here is the continuation from last time (which was a few weeks ago). I'm repeating chapter 2 in its entirety, to refresh your memories.

*****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.” [here starts the new part].  Then they wanted to get one so they asked “how much does it cost” to each other. They realized it was one penny and they went inside to get one penny. “OK” said Jemima Puddled and “ok” they all said. So they went inside and they bought it. And then Jemima Puddleduck said “shhhhhhhhhh” because there was a bear. And then, when they turned the corner, what they saw was “rooooaaaarrrr.” Because there had been a bear. And they ran home. But the bear blew down their house. But the snail’s cage was still there. Jemima Puddleduck said “never mind. We’ll make a new house.” So they made a new house out of twigs.

*****

And, look. Happy math!  We had seen a pic of a child's volcano made out of MUS manipulatives. So, she wanted to make her own (as I wrote up this blog). It is very tricky, as the blocks don't really click together like Lego. (and it's a wee bit lopsided. No matter!)

That is it for this morning.
Today is election day here in Canada, so we will be heading out to vote together later on. Fina knows the green (we know our local candidate) and the red (Justin Trudeau) and the blue (Stephen Harper is our prime minister). No interest in the orange, I'm not sure why, she just doesn't have anything to connect herself to them.

Fina also wants to go to the park and work on some of her acrylic painting. This might be the last time before the winter hits that we can actually do this outside!

Thanks for starting week 6 with us. Tomorrow we have our outdoor playgroup, so no schooling for us. We are looking forward to it.

UPDATE:

We did get to paint at the park. It was such a lovely day. We were glad to spend a few hours outside at the park.  And a friend and her mom joined us for a few hours as well.
If you know Fina, you know she is ALWAYS hosting birthday parties for her stuffed animals. This became a happy birthday painting for Acorn, her stuffy chipmunk.

Yes, she is holding a painter's palette.  Too funny!

And we did get out to cast our votes in our federal election.

Very serious business. Well and the sun made it difficult to smile, I guess.

Fina had a keen interest in politics this year (hopefully she will continue with this when she is older). She knows who is the leader of which party, the colours (red, blue, green. For some unknown reason, she had no interest in orange), she knows that Harper was the current Prime Minister. She watched part of two debates (the leaders' debate as well as our local candidates') and was very excited about the whole thing.  She asked one of our friends (the mom of one of her little friends) how she was going to vote. The kindly mom took her into her confidence and told her. Later, F to me "why is it so private? Why can't you tell your friends how you will vote?" I brought her to the little booth with me ("why do you have to hide behind here to vote?") and picked her up so she could see my ballot going into the box.  I believe she will be quite pleased this morning to know that Trudeau and the "reds" won in Canada (though she would have voted green! Not only because we know our local candidate, but also because she is a fan of nature)!

October 18 - BOREDOM!

A blurb about kids being "bored." A good friend of mine L has taught me (among many, many other things) not to worry if the kids are bored. They'll get over it. It is good for them to be bored.  (She has a really wonderful and positive hands-off approach to parenting). And they need and want a lot of unstructured play. Well, I can attest to this working and showing its fruits. After many days of being inside with this terrible cold Fina has had, this is what she did this week.

This lovely nothing-planned-for-you-to-do-Fina leads to her building houses with a toy shelf and a fridge and pantry.

Toy shelf up high on the left, pantry and fridge (with eggs) lower right.

Acorn the chipmunk is in this bed.

And to building a crazy fort/toy store/apothecary at the edge of the bed, with many tunnels and a working light!

Yes, Fina is scanning the price of the vaseline and of the teddy bear.

Let your kids be bored. Let them find their own creative play. Indoor and outdoor!
(Even a singleton like Fina can do it. Imagine the possibilities for siblings!!!)

Here are a few outdoor boredom-type of shots from a while back. When she played alone.

She loves to chalk on the sidewalk. Then she took pics with my iPad.

In the dead of summer, she wanted to go into the (mosquito infested) forest. Mom stood on the bridge and didn't go in. Yes, that is a mosquito shirt. And a giant wild rhubarb leaf as a parasol.

Here are the first three stanzas of a poem we are reading together right now. I found them inspiring and fitting to this blurb of mine today.

The Unseen Playmate

When children are playing alone on the green,
In comes the playmate that never was seen.
When children are happy and lonely and good,
The Friend of the Children comes out of the wood.

Nobody hear him and nobody saw,
His is a picture you never could draw,
But he's sure to be present, abroad or at home,
When children are happy and playing alone.

He lies in the laurels, he runs on the grass,
He sings when you tinkle the musical glass;
Whene'er you are happy and cannot tell why,
The Friend of the Children is sure to be by!

Though Fina has never really had an imaginary friend, like some kids, she does interact with her play things and imagines all sorts of things. I do think the unseen playmate is around, when she is happy and lonely and good.

Let your kids be bored. You won't regret it!!!

October 16, AO year 1, week 5

We had a bit of a later start this morning because I decided to do some baking (lots of pumpkin) and dinner prep.  Fina helped me by emptying the dishwasher after she had done some drawing, colouring and crafting on her own (she made a little rat with a house with an awning for when it rains). Fina is still sick, but we are going to try to do as much as school as we are able to do today.

Fina narrated Genesis 28:10-22 very well. Jacob's Ladder.

Fina wanted to use her princess etch-a-sketch thing to do some 1-20 number drills. She had said so yesterday, and we had a sticky note in our math book to remind us. So, we did a bunch of them. Again, using 1T1 etc and it worked fine.
Then I decided to give her a timed math time. 15 minutes and she was able to do 15D and E. Not bad at all. I'm trying to encourage her to use her time wisely. But she spent some time making curly-cue 2s etc. When the timer rang, she really wanted to do one more page. I explained to her that she had wasted some time doing fancy numbers and that if she hadn't wasted that time, she would have been on the next page already.   She was ok with that (surprisingly!)  They are pretty, though!

Fina is doing two episodes of her yoga. There are 20 plus episodes from her to choose from, and again, she likes to take 7 minutes to leisurely scan through them to decide which one to do. I stopped her right away and told her that she can not spend 5 minutes choosing which one to do. So she is doing number 1 and we will be doing them in order. Unless she has one that she can tell me immediately that she would like to do, then that is fine. If not, I will be choosing the next one. I hope this helps her not to dilly-daddle over things and get more use of her time and more enjoyment. We'll see if this works! The habit of prompt attention...

I should do her yoga with her, but I prefer to take the opportunity to write this blog and to tidy up the kitchen a bit from all my morning pumpkin baking!

We read chapter 2 "Law of Authority and Obedience" from Parables from Nature. We tried using the modern translation and it worked much better. She was able to understand it more clearly, I think, and her narration demonstrated that. It is a cute story about a worker bee who overhears two children talking about bees and how there should be no queen, but that all bees should be alike. She

We read chapter 4 of Paddle to the Sea. She narrated it ok. We mainly talked about it together, looking at the pictures and talking about how dams are made, how the pond can flood over the dam, how the beaver makes a hollow house with an underwater entrance but how there is an above ground portion in it, above the water, with air.

Cursive upper case S. It is the only upper case until the remaining lower case letters have been learned. They incorporate it here so that we can start writing sentences with proper capitalization and punctuation too, I think. It works for us, because Fina's name actually starts with an S (though we are still missing a few letters from her name). She did a great job with S. We practiced some previous letters as well.  Then she wrote Sam, Sat and Santa. Then we went on to the next lesson, with punctuation: "Sam sat."  Wow, even a period!!!

We finished with Fina reciting all her poetry to me. She still wants me to recite all of them to her, but I can't. She thinks it quite funny that she has to correct my small words (and, as, etc).  We read a new poem today, "The Unseen Playmate," but haven't yet found another to memorize and recite.

Well, we had a three-day week, but we covered (basically) everything. I'm happy to start week 6 next week and fill in some missing things (like artist study, catechism, hymns).

Thanks for following this week with us!

October 15, AO year 1, week 5

Fina is still sick over here, but we are going to try to do some school work today anyway. She slept better than the night before.

We started with morning prayer. And then listened to some Brahms as well.

Tackling math again today. We spent some time reviewing 1-20, using the MUS nomenclature system, and it finally worked much better (without the confusion of the teens. We will learn their English names later.).  We then did MUS 15 A, B and C with no problem at all.  (I'm glad that, on the wise advice of some good friends, I took a step back and tried again. I know she can do it, and both of us being frustrated is not the point.) I'm so happy we did it!

Poetry: she recited the 5 poems she knows. Then she asked me to recite them. I was not able to recite all of them. I kept getting stuck (not on purpose) and she was able to correct me and get me on the right track. Very funny! We read three new poems today, "The Hayloft," "Farewell to the Farm" and "North-West Passage."

We read "The Story of Regulus" from Fifty Famous Stories Retold. Fina was able to narrate it back to me satisfactorily. It isn't easy to narrate back, but she is trying. Some narrations are better and more complete than others. But I'm pleased so far. We took a look at the map to see where Regulus was (in Carthage) and went back and forth to Rome.

Then we read the first half of "St Kentigern" from Our Island Saints. I had never heard of him. He is also known as St Mungo (I've never heard of him either). We're interested to see how his story continues next week. Fina narrated the first half back to me. She got some of it. There is an old man saint in the story, who is Kentigern's master and benefactor, St Servanus. Fina asked me if there are any women saints. (Of course, there are. We just haven't come across any in our readings yet!)

For both Regulus and Kentigern, we took a look at our timeline and added them to it.

We read "The Fox and the Grapes" and "The Bundle of Sticks" from Aesop's Fables and Fina narrated them back to me.  I feel she sometimes doesn't really get the moral of the story. She asked me "were the grapes ripe or not?" at the end of the first fable!

We also read "Only One Woof" from the James Herriot book. It is a cute story of two sheep dog pups who are separated. The one dog never barks, and only barks once (one single woof) in his life when he is reunited with his brother after a few years. And he never barks again. Fina narrated it back to me - ish.

I think we probably did too many readings in a row, but we were nice and comfy on the couch! (Terrible cold = tissues, chamomile tea and oranges while reading and narrating.)

Then she took another stab at her cursive h. It is getting better. She wrote "hat," "ham" and "has" today. Cursive writing isn't easy. You have to really work on your flow and your shapes. She enjoys it, though.

We took a very cursory look at Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot's painting that we are currently studying. "A View Near Volterra." We will continue with it over the next couple of weeks.

I told her about how MUS has a place online where you can post things you build with their math manipulative blocks. So, of course, Fina just had to do one! A flower in a garden with a pink gate and the blue is water to water the flower.

October 14, AO year 1, week 5

So, part of the reason for homeschooling is that learning would be enjoyable. The whining and crying are not the point! I've got a lot of work to do with her in regards to habit training. I know the whining and crying are there, no matter what we are doing. But I understand that she was getting frustrated with math. Fina works herself up into a tif (those of you who know her can just picture her face!) and I know she needs saving from her own emotions. How to do it, though.  Never mind homeschooling - this whole parenting gig isn't an easy one.

Yesterday we had our second meeting of our local outdoor play group. We had gorgeous weather! We had a lot of fun with a few new people! The kids had a great day, making new friends along the way. The raked and jumped in leaf piles, buried a dead squirrel, played with worms, sticks, mud puddles and much more.  Fina woke up very sick with a stuffy and runny nose, though. But we went anyway, not too worried about spreading germs outdoors (hopefully!).

Fina is still sick today. So we opted not to do any schooling. We have been playing memory and Uno and drinking lots of fluids. She was up for a few hours during the night. We will read some Peter Pan later today. But that is about it. This is a definite bonus of homeschooling. We will continue our school tomorrow, or when she is feeling more like herself.

October 12 AO year 1, week 5

On Sunday, we went to a beautiful nature area in our town, on the museum grounds with dad, for a walk through town and some outside time (it hit 24 degrees or something, which is practically unheard of for this time of year in this part of our world). Fina found a few different leaves that had fallen and we brought out our new field guide and identified them (I think we identified them correctly).  She took leaf rubbings while I navigated the field guide. This is what we came up with.

Aldar-leaved Buckthorn. It was yellow. (It is autumn here).

She also took another rubbing of it, drew it, coloured it in and "labelled" it!  Ha!

We also found what we think is a Red-osier Dogwood leaf. It was red. She didn't take a rubbing of it. We just identified it. Its branches are red, as the guide says.

The mosquitoes were still out - the downside to having such warm temperatures. When it snows at the beginning of October (which it has for many of these since we moved to Manitoba), you can be sure that the mosquitoes die off! But we had a fun afternoon.

*****
Wow! Here we are, starting week 5!

Fina wanted to start with poetry. We re-read a bunch of old poems, and read two new ones, "From a Railway Carriage" and "Winter-Time." She learned to recite "Fairy Bread" and recited all her other poems except for "The Cow" which she did not want to recite (for some unexplained reason). We looked at the globe with a flashlight to represent the sun to see how the earth turns and it is night time in one part at the same time it is daytime somewhere else on earth. We were inspired by one of the poems "Sun Travels" that states poetically that the sun moves while different children experience night and day.

"and when at eve I rise from tea [in England, presumably]
Day dawns beyond the Atlantic Sea"

This poem was from a few weeks back, but she asked for it by name (again, for some unexplained reason). So we read it and I thought we should talk about the fact that the sun does not travel, but we feel like it moves, because we are moving. I was able to explain that it takes 24 hours for the earth to rotate all around, part of it day, part of it night. Fina said she wanted to rotate the globe that slowly. She tried and it took her about 35 seconds to rotate it slowly and she was quite content with that!

We read the Gospel for this coming Sunday. As I started to read it, Fina asked if she would have to narrate it. I guess it is sinking in. I told her no. I probably should have told her yes!

We read chapter 3 "The Romans Come Again" from Our Island Story. The continuation of Caesar going to Britain, with 800 ships this time. He was victorious but as they left, they got stuck in a storm and so many boats were damaged that the remaining ships had to make more trips back and forth to return all their soldiers. [That was my narration, not hers!] She narrated it well.  We took a look at the map to see again the channel from France to England.

Continuing with Math. She is having a lot of trouble with 10, 11, 12, 13 and 20. We did like an hour of drilling these, but it didn't work that well. She still gets confused. We did MUS 14E and 14F. She gets that fine.

We had some trouble with whining today. She gets herself so worked up about nothing. We talked about it after and we're going to try this out (we'll see if it works). When she starts whining, I am to stop what I am doing and hug and kiss her, and she will try to stop. We wasted a lot of time during math with this whining which escalated to full-out crying. Fun times!

We read "How the Camel got its Hump" from Just So Stories. She narrated it well.

We continued with the cursive letter h. She is trying and is doing well, though her shapes are not consistent. We will continue with it. She wrote h, hh and hhhh today.

We read chapters 7 and 8 of Peter Pan as part of our free reading.

October 9, AO year 1, week 4

Oh my, today wasn't the best. Of course, it was the first time dad was sitting right here, near us, on the computer. Not good!

Realistically, it was fine. We just had a bit more whining and complaining around the cursive time. We need to keep working on that. (Having dad sitting here is kind of like having a video camera on you. You realize that things do not look pretty!)

She did some cursive h. It is a tricky letter and she will do fine. She just needs to concentrate to make it happen.

The we read Genesis 25:27-34. She narrated Esau giving up his birthright for a bowl of lentils and some bread to Jacob fine.

Then we did some poetry. We read "The Looking-Glass River" and "Fairy Bread." She now can recite "Rain," "Singing," "Happy Thought," "The Cow" (almost) and "Time to Rise" (almost). We also started learning "Fairy Bread" to recite, though that one is difficult to recite.

We moved on to Chapter 2 of the Burgess Bird Book, "The Old Orchard Bully - the Sparrow." She was able to narrate that after an entire reading. These stories are quite cute.  They are descriptive (which gets lost in narration), but the story itself is funny and the characters are memorable.  We looked up both the Wren and the Sparrow in our brand new Saskatchewan and Manitoba Nature Guide!  There is a series of field guides put out by Lone Pine. (Thanks to our friend E, for suggesting it to us. I found it to be the cheapest at indigo.ca at the moment.) We also finally bought our Handbook for Nature Study which will last us through all of homeschooling. In CM circles, it is like the Bible for Nature Study.  Nature study, here we come!

And then she did some more math. 14 C and 14 D. She is still getting confused with the teens (not easy), so I've been randomly drilling her on 10, 11, 12 and 13. 14-19 make more sense in English!

That is it for today.

Oh, and the last two nights the aurora borealis was supposed to be visible in our part of the world, but it has been so terribly cloudy that I haven't been able to see it, though I have woken up a couple of times to check it. I had a dream the other night that we were at church and Fina and I saw it and I was excitedly telling Fr D (our pastor) that it was our first time seeing it. Does that count?

October 8, AO year 1, week 4

Well, another emergency library day, to cover for the librarian.

So, I brought some school work along. Fina was able to do some math, 14A and 14B.

She wrote a bunch of words with the letter x in them and other words for her cursive. She did so well. What a difference that focusing (and no whining, flailing, falling allowed in the library, because there are other people there) makes!

And she beaded a necklace.

She recited some poetry to me.

We read a few books while at the library. She helped me gather books, scan books, put things away etc. She helped me go to the post office and drag stacks of ILL books back to the library. She was happy to colour and work independently while I was dealing with library patrons. (Not always patiently, but still)

Our friends J and J came to pick her up after lunch and took her to the park until I was done. It was cold, though, and when I found them they were just about ready to go. Thanks to J and J she got a few hours outside!

When we got home, we finished the chapter of Peter Pan that we had been reading, at her request.

October 7, AO year 1, week 4

So, yesterday we had the first weekly meeting of our outdoor playgroup here in our little town. It was great fun. We had our regular people plus two boys (6 and 8 yr olds) whose pregnant mom went home to nap with her two year old. More of the village raising kids. It was nice to help her out and her boys were very fun and were well enjoyed by the other kids. Fina had never really had dealings with them and said that they were very nice and very fun. So that was great. The weather was just beautiful! It was a great afternoon outside for us! Unfortunately, I didn't get any pics. At the end of the afternoon, the kids found their way to a giant mud puddle, the only water anywhere for miles around, but they found it! Fina was covered in mud, but very happy. I had her splash pants and boots, but she went in with her pants and bare feet. That shows you how warm it was.

I've put up posters around town for our outdoor playgroup and I'm hoping we get more people next week.

Listened to Brahms during breakfast.

Of course, Fina wanted to do poetry first. We read some new poems: "The Swing" and "Time to Rise." She almost has "The Cow" memorized. She needs to work on the last stanza. She enjoys reciting poetry.

We read "Moses the Kitten," the first chapter from James Herriott's Treasury for Children. James Herriott is a vet and he tells of his adventures. It was very cute. Lots of pics, which is different for our school work, and Fina narrated it very well. The gist of it is that the vet finds a baby kitten on a farm and the farmer and his wife take care of it. The farmers have a sow who had just had 12 piglets, so they had put a heater in with the pigs to keep them arm. So they put the kitten and his bowl of milk in there to keep him warm as well. The next time the vet comes, the farmer shows his a funny sight. The kitten had decided to suckle with the other piglets and cuddles up with the sow all the time and follows her around. The kitten becomes part of the pig family. Even years later, the cat looks at the pig barn lovingly.

Fina's a bit antsy today. (Our homeschooling friends in town went out to jump on their trampoline for a few minutes before starting school today. We can't do that, but we can do some yoga. Indoor movement). Fina wanted to do episode 9, "Mike the Cosmic Space Monkey" from www.cosmickids.com. It is a shorter one, but a good episode.

Then we continued working on her cursive x, and ax as well. She did fine. Though we really need to keep working on paying attention (and not throwing herself on the floor whining, with mom raising her voice. Yeah, not a stellar moment for us.) It isn't that the cursive itself is difficult for her. She likes it to be perfect (and so do I) but she gets so easily frustrated. Part of it is her acting very dramatic, everything is the end of the world etc. Very annoying to me. Very fun yet upsetting for her. And a great waste of time for all of us. How I am going to fix this, I don't know. Her letters were fine though, of course! My mother would say "B-R-A-T!" At least if there was frustration for a real cause, it would be a bit easier to handle.  I literally prayed aloud that God would help me not be upset, and she kept whining right through it. Help! Thankfully this doesn't happen all the time, but I would love it to NEVER happen. I'm asking too much, right?

We got over that spat just fine and moved on to some fun and well-done narration. We read "Alexander and Bucephalus" as well as "Diogenes" from Fifty Famous Stories. Becephalus is Alexander the Great's horse. The boy Alexander tames him and his father realizes he is destined for great things. Diogenes is a wise old crazy man who Alexander goes to visit. Alexander asks is there is anything he needs, and Diogenes just asks him to move out of his sunlight. Alexander says to his soldiers "If I could not be Alexander, I would be Diogenes."  She got it, I think. Cute stories from Greek history. We are going to the add these historical figures to our Timeline.

Then we read two Aesop Fables: "The Kid and the Wolf" and "The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse." She narrated them fine as well

On to MUS, 13D, E and F. She gets it very well, but is slow to get through her pages, and then gets tired of Math. I would like her to give her full attention to what she is doing. She is learning, though. It isn't dire (yet!). I might consider doing the timer thing. She gets the concepts and she enjoys it. She just likes to fiddle around and work slowly, I think. We will keep working on it.

Catechism Session 3. "God is our Father." Fina drew a picture of Jesus holding her hand and holding mom's hand.

The Bible is God's message to us. It shows us how God loves us. God sent Jesus to show us how to love.

Overall, it was a bit of a stressful and finicky day, (though it got better) but certainly not as bad as I had anticipated that some of our school days could be. This is just to show you things aren't perfect at home. But we are happy to be doing this together!