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.

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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.