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.