November 30, AO year 1, week 9

Yesterday was the first Sunday of Advent. We have our advent wreath (almost) ready and we lit the first candle. We are also starting our Jesse Tree tomorrow. We have used this Jesse Tree before. She has free little colouring pages with the ornaments that you colour yourself and add to your tree.

We are doing our daily advent devotional by Henri Nouwen, "The Lord is Near." I have had this advent meditation booklet for years.  I love Henri Nouwen. It is a bit above and beyond for Fina, but that is ok too. With the addition of the Jesse tree, starting tomorrow, she will have plenty to chew on.

We are continuing to read our bible every night at the end of supper (while little Miss Takes Her Time finishes eating).

We did our morning prayer this morning and listened through the Seeds of Courage album as well. We also listened to some Brahms.

We sang "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel." And "Praise God from whom all Blessings Flow" together

When I offered her the choice of continuing reading Hudson, or reading the story of St David, Fina answered: "I wanted to read more about Henry Hudson. I thought it was already done!" We read from p 29-43. Poor Henry Hudson suffered a mutiny and nothing further was known about him.  We talked about it as we went, rather than a true narration. And we continued looking at the globe as we read through it. We learned about scurvy, "the grey killer." Quite interesting!

Fina did a few episodes of her yoga, as a break.

Continuing with tally marks in math. 23D, E and F. Done!

Catechism, we did the advent sections, pages 151-156 and 222.

Poetry, Fina recited Fairy Bread very fast while running through the house like a madwoman!!!

We read about St David from Our Island Saints and Fina narrated it to me. It was a good story. I don't know David who this is, from Wales.

We wrote a few cursive words, using j and g, without yet learning a new letter.

November 27, AO year 1, week 9

After yesterday's inside day, I'm glad we are going to meet our friend J and J for some outdoor fun right after lunch.

We listened to some Brahms this morning.

We read chapters 5 and 6 of Pinocchio, our free read.

Chapter 23 of our Math.  Tally marks. It is very simple, but it is taking her a bit of concentration and diligence (hello?) to wrap her head around it. It is funny how the things I think will be difficult are not, and the things I think will be simple are not either!!! But she is getting it. We did 23 A, B and C.

We did some poetry. She recited all that she could recite. I read three new poems "To Willie and Henrietta," "To my Mother," and "To my Auntie."

We sang through "Praise God from whom all blessings flow" a few times.

We read "Androclus and the Lion" from Fifty Famous Stories Retold. She gave me a wonderful narration of it. And we had a chance to speak about people being fed to the lions (!)

We reviewed her cursive letters g and j. She wanted to do a review of all her letters, so we did that as well.

Mom's in red.

A quick lunch, and then out to play. You know, it is only *minus* 8 (feels like minus 17) celsius!

November 26, not really a school day

Yesterday (Thursday November 26) we spent the day at dad's university. He along with 11 of his professor friends and other colleagues gave a series of 15 minute lectures on many different topics for studnts and staff and faculty of the university. Fina and I participated in the entire day. She brought some Lego, her new found love of the Rush Hour Jr game, a few toys, her favourite new back pack and some blank paper to colour and doodle on. She was exceedingly well behaved. Even after having her favourite ice cream cone from the cafeteria at lunch!

Here is dad giving his talk on U2.

Fina with her toys (and notice her backpack!)

She made a Lego Ninjaturtle

When we came home, she dictated this story to me. I thought some of you might enjoy it.

November 2015 Story About a Candy Cane

1  Once upon a time in a far off place there was a candy cane and it was like a shepherd's staff and that's how it got its name because it looked like a cane. And it was a very hard candy to find because it was striped. And it was very big. There was a little girl and she loved this kind of candy. This girl was sweet and, like I said before, she loved candy canes because they tasted nice and sour and minty. And her name was Lucy. Lucy lived with her friends, the acorns. She lived in a small cottage and it was a gingerbread cottage and she loved that little cottage because every single day she was allowed to break off a little piece of her roof and eat it. She loved colouring. It was her best thing. She had a friend and her name was Elizabeth. Elizabeth loved strawberries and candy canes and mints and colouring. They were almost like sisters. They were both sweet little girls. They were both six. The loved playing dress-up and doing all kinds of things, they were very busy girls. They usually spent their time playing together. Whatever they did, they never ever made a mistake with their writing, wherever they were. And they got lots of money because they were really being good. Because they ate lots of gingerbread and gingerbread was good for them.

One day, when Elizabeth and Lucy were playing outside, they saw an eagle, flying with an olive vine in its mouth. The Eagle said “caw caw.” They asked the eagle if they could have a ride and the eagle said “caw caw yes.” So they got on the back of the eagle and they started to fly. They said “what happened?” It was a very funny thing, they loved carrots and they asked the eagle, “could you please fetch us a carrot from a store?” The eagle said “caw, caw, yes, caw, caw.” They also loved strawberries and they also asked the eagle, “could you please fetch us strawberries from the store?”  And the eagle said “caw, caw, yes caw, caw.” And they also asked the eagle “we love broccoli. Could you please fetch us some broccoli and maybe a tambourine too?” The eagle said “I will fetch you a broccoli and a tambourine.” “And a father clock,” said Lucy and Elizabeth together, “we love father clocks.” So the eagle got them all of this. They were so happy. They decided, “Elizabeth and I would like to go back home” so the eagle started to fly away and they came back to their gingerbread house. I didn't tell you but they are sisters. So every day for lunch and supper they broke off a little piece of their house and ate it because it was healthy. They looked at their globe and wondered, “why is the world so small on the globe? I'm not even the size of that country. It isn't even the size of my foot.” 

“How about let's bake some strawberry blueberry pie?” “Oh yeah, blueberry pie is good. It's beautiful and sweet. Oh yes,” said Lucy. “Best, because today’s our birthday, so of course it’s best.”

2 (she told me to write 2, because she wants to continue this story at some time.)

Note: She drew this candy cane during the lectures, and used her kneaded eraser to do the subtractive drawing.

She also did a few episodes of her yoga. It was an indoor day, without much moving around, so I'm glad she did some yoga at least.

November 25, AO year 1, week 9

Fina has had lots of outdoor time the last few days. It was lovely yesterday at our outdoor play group. The kids went tobogganing. Then we went for a nice walk in the dark before supper as well.  Today she said to me, as she was climbing up a snow pile, "this is why I love winter!" Good thing she loves it, because winters in MB are towards the long side!

Silly geese!

We listened to some Brahms as we had our lunch. We had a medical appointment in the morning, and I figured, since we were dressed and out, that we'd take some time to play and running some errands before heading home to do our school work. Big mistake (see the end of our school day!)

We started with some math. We did sections 22D, E and F. That skip counting by 5 song is really working.
Next time we will be moving on to tally marks. Exciting!

We read chapter 5 from The Burgess Bird Book, about the robin and the bluebird. She was once again wanting to colour in the colouring page that goes with that chapter and then she was quite unable to narrated the chapter. Fool me twice, shame on me. That won't happen again. I was able to tease some basic things out of her (like the bluebirds build their nest in the fence post, while the robins build their nests out of mud and it can get washed away by rain or blown down by the wind).

Read some of our next free read, Pinocchio. She says she remembers some of it from dad reading it to her. She remembered the bitter water the fairy gives Pinocchio. We read three chapters of it. I have never read it (strange enough, as my family is Italian) and it is quite something. In the third chapter, Pinocchio has himself a hissy fit and throws himself down on the ground, while the onlookers,

Continuing to work on the cursive letter g. She wrote glass. Then she learned the letter j. She did fine with it.

She made a few Chi Rho symbols too (☧), for some unknown reason! 

So, they are backwards, but still.

Fina: "mom, do you know what this is?" Mom: "yes, it is the Chi Rho." Fina: "yup, you're right!" Fun!

This precious and lovely moment devolved a few minutes later into the following scenario: Fina crying, whining, making a hoarse donkey kind of braying while working on her letter j. Mommy-fail moment, I brayed right back at her, and loudly. Which led to more crying, tears, gnashing of teeth etc etc. Should I remind myself again that afternoon schooling does not work so well for us!!! So, we had to have some cuddles, apologies and a chat about why this kind of behaviour does not help us, it does not help our cursive to look nice and so forth. I had to send her upstairs (to be out of my sight) for a little while, so she is playing a few rounds of Rush Hour Jr.  As she is doing that, I hear her singing her skip counting by 5s song at the top of her lungs. She is over it, it seems (for the moment at least)!

So I ran upstairs to take a pic of her playing nicely and she proceeded to be a brat by rolling back onto the bed so that I couldn't get a good pic of her.

And now she is reciting from Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream "I know a bank where the while thyme blows" "on my nose, on my nose, on my nice, clean nose." Yikes!

Oh, my life is quite something, isn't it? Go ahead and laugh, my dear friend J!

She now came back downstairs, wanting to colour, and asked to hear the quote from Midsummer Night's Dream that she was referencing, with the caveat that she "does not want to learn it," but just to hear it. So I found the audioclip of that passage and she is listening to all the passages while colouring.

I might as well share this resource with all of you, my loyal blog followers. Our friend L is using this book with her kids in her homeschool, to learn to recite passages from Shakespeare.  There is a website that goes along with the book, How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare by Ken Ludwig. On the website, the quotes that are to be learned are available to be printed and there are also links to audioclips of those same quotes. Scroll down and you will find them too!

November 23, AO year 1, week 9

We did a lot of Lego building this weekend (and some more this morning).

Fina recited some of her poetry while I was preparing breakfast. She is going to recite "Fairy Bread" at our next co-op meeting. She is continuing to work on "Now and Then," she knows the first two stanzas.

We did our morning prayer and listened to some Brahms through breakfast.

We bought Fina a backpack this weekend (she wants it to carry around her water bottle and to gather items she finds when we are playing outside!). It was the best $7 we ever spent. She has had it with her all day and she loves it!

We finally got back into some math. Chapter 22 is skip counting by 5s. Those little skip counting songs really work. She know 5 through 50 without any trouble. We did 22 A, B and C. And 22X from the extra activities booklet. She is doing a great job!

We are singing "Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow" at our Co-op as our hymn. So we sang that a few times this morning as well

She did two episodes of her cosmickids.com yoga. (You would think it would help her to be less hyper, and active and excited, but not really!)

We read Exodus 3:4-17, Moses and the burning bush. Fina narrated the first part well. Then she "couldn't remember" anything else. Right...  Oh no, my mistake. I was actually supposed to read Chapter 3: verses 1-4 plus 17. Yikes! We reread the correct part and she was able to narrate it very well... Oh my!!! (Not my worst homeschooling-mommy fail ever, trust me!)

Cursive letter g. She did a great job with it! We also wrote: gas, gab, gag and gaga.

We read pages 19-28 of Janice Weaver's Husdon, our Canadian replacement to the Benjamin Franklin biography by Ingri D'Aulaire. We read it in chunks, with narrations / discussions throughout. We had the globe with us and we looked at Henry Hudson's trips where he tried to cut over the Article Circle to try to get to China and his other voyages. I am surprised at how much Fina is retaining about Hudson. It is great!

We read two Aesop Fables.  The moral to the "The Farmer and the Stork" is that you will be judged by the company you keep, even if you are not guilty of their crime. And "The Sheep in the Pig" is a cute story about a pig getting caught and squealing so hard because he knows he is headed to the butcher's. The sheep don't understand why he is making such a fuss, but that is because the farmer merely wants their wool. "It is easy to be brave when there is no danger."  She narrated both this short fables very well.

We spent some time reciting some poetry. She also learned stanzas 3 and 4 of "Night and Day." She can now (just about) recite the first 4 stanzas.

Yes, this is how we recite poetry around here!

We looked at our next picture, Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot's Homer and the Shepherd's in a Landscape.  It is a lovely painting. She was still a bit stressed about remembering stuff, though I reminded her how well she did at co-op. So, I had her describe what she saw with the image in front of her. And then I turned it over and we talked about it again. And then we looked at it again and talked about it again. It is really only in her head. She is very perceptive!

Then we decided to have our elevenses (some little fruit maple tarts we made last night) with some tea. While we sat, we continued listening to Brahms. Just another few weeks and we will be moving on to our next composer, so we had better keep up with our listening!

Then Fina wanted to play some Rush Hour Jr (we have it on loan from our friends).  She did cards 18 and 19. It is a great thinking puzzle. She is really enjoying doing them. We have purchased the regular, non-junior version for her. We will loan it to our friends for a while, once we receive it. She will move on to it once we are done with the Junior version. A good trade, I think.

We have our outdoor play group tomorrow, and it is supposed to be a balmy zero degrees, so that will be great! Fina is wanting to get outside to play this afternoon once we have lunch. Her little friend K will be coming to play in our yard once she gets home from school. Should be fun!

Thanks for reading about our day. Does anyone have any comments about the labels? Do they help at all?

November 20

So, I just spent an hour this morning (while Fina slept in, FINALLY!) adding labels, in a very cursory way, to all of my previous blog posts. NMB, let me know what you think! I have not been able to get the "search my blog" box to perform any kind of searches, so I deleted it. I will try to work on my labels with more detail with my new posts. I hope this helps make my blog a bit more searchable.

We spent A LOT of time outside, playing in the snow, today. It was not as windy as yesterday, and it was snowing ever so gently. Beautiful!

She is trying to catch snow for "tire sur la neige" for the third time. She thought if she held the bowl forwards, more snow would find it. Alas, it did not!

November 19 - Co-op day #1

So exciting! We had an excellent co-op get together today. We met at our local library a little later than anticipated (the weather in Southern MB was treacherous! A lot of blowing snow.

We started with a pep-talk / devotional / wonderful words of encouragement by our friend E. The kids sang our national anthem and prayed the Lord's Prayer together.

We moved to recitation. T did a great job with his speech from A Midsummer Night's Dream.  Our friend SF recited a couple funny poems / tongue twisters. Fina recited "The Cow" poem wonderfully.

We looked at Rembrandt's Prodigal Son for our picture study.

L told us the painter's name, and then we looked at the painting for 3 minutes. Fina nearly freaked out crying because she remembered that she doesn't like having to look intently and then having the pic taken away to then tell back what she remembers. But she was able to remember, just like everyone else. She had some very insightful observations (like the people in the background look not nice). I think today's experience really helped her not be stressed about this anymore. She sees she did just as well as the older boys did.  I am so grateful for this co-op. Not having siblings and schooling alone is a challenge. Seeing the other children participate in this showed her she CAN do it. Priceless!

We took turns saying what we saw. Then L read to us the story of the Prodigal Son from Luke. Then we looked at the painting again and tried to relate it, though the kids didn't quite get who was who, but I know we moms enjoyed making the correlation.

Henri Nouwen has a book about this painting. The Return of the Prodigal Son.   I have a lenten devotional book based on the lectures that formed the book, From fear to Love.  In it, I remember reading that one hand is of a woman and one hand is of a man. I saw that right away when I saw the painting.

Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream as retold in E. Nesbitt's book - I can't believe that Fina remembered a lot about the story, and was retelling Puck's mischevious acts, and she could answer the questions about who did what. We had read this a few weeks ago! This CM reading and narrating thing REALLY works.

Hymn. L lead us in the Doxology. We sang it through a few times. It was fun, I thought.

Finger knitting. I was a bit flustered to start, but the kids got the hang of it just the same. It goes to show you how difficult it is each to teach people stuff! They enjoyed it. Even little 3-year old E did quite a few rows of hers.  We hope to knit a few tubes of finger knitting, and then sew them together to make a scarf.

Nature Study. E showed us how to paint a landscape, with a blue sky, golden fields and some green trees in the middle. The children took turns presenting their water colour painting (using the dry-brush technique) to the rest of us.

We had our lunch somewhere in there, because our time had moved on and the kids were getting antsy. Our plan is to have our lunch outside of the library.  We also did some jumping jacks, push ups and a few dances of "Ring around the Rosey" sprinkled throughout our time.

We got outside to play at around 2pm (it takes quite a while to wrangle up all 5 kids, plus 3 moms!)

We went to the park near our house, and the kids got to play on the play structure, on the dirt hills, and in the snow. It was a lovely time had by all!

Seriously, geese? You are tardy!!!

S says his favourite part was "playing with his friends and the finger knitting." Fina told me her favourite part was the finger knitting and the painting. SA said she liked the finger knitting and the painting (and signing out books, ha!). We will have to ask T what he liked most about the day.

What a blessing to have people to share this journey with. I have no words to describe how blessed I felt today with these ladies and their lovely kids. What we did today might not advance us in checking things off our homeschooling list, but it is SO MUCH more than that. Worth beyond measure.

It is so nice that the children enjoy each other's company. The play so nicely together. But they also learn well. They did their best to respect each other and to respect the moms. I know Fina enjoyed listening to others.

Our friend E summed up our day much more eloquently in our FB group.  This is what she wrote:

"What a great day! Our children sang, prayed, played, observed and reflected on a Rembrandt, laughed at the fun of and acted out Shakespeare, practiced practical handicrafting: finger-knitting! Painted a Manitoba landscape, practiced public speaking through recitation (poetry, rhymes, and Shakespeare lines) and presenting their artwork to one another.  A blessing of a day... Not to mention the first snow day of the season!"

Before supper, Fina did 10 cards from Rush Hour Jr game (thank you E, for the loan). She just loved it! And she really got in to it. I was concerned it would be too challenging for her (we haven't really played these types of games before) but I need not have worried. I'm going to be buying her the non junior version soon.

After supper, she wanted to do more water colour painting.

All in all, a wonderful day!!!

November 18, AO year 1, week 9

We have had a lot of fun lately, and it has been a good break for us.

Our outdoor playgroup was wonderful yesterday. It is so lovely to have a group of moms who want to do this with us. Beyond incredible.

The weather is changing for us. Goodbye plus 0 weather! You have lasted even TOO long for normal this year.

Fina decided to do a few episodes of her yoga after breakfast. That gave mom a chance to catch up on some computer secretarial-type work (I have been helping out some friends with their maple syrup products and catering company.  Check them out at Chez Mémère. Their stuff is really yummy. I have been setting up mailchimp, working on their order forms and other administrative work. It is nice to have a little bit of extra income, while helping out some very nice people.)

Today, we decided to do some math (while listening to Brahms). Thankfully we had stopped at 16 in our Primer Activities book, so this was a great way for us to review sections 16 through 21. That wasn't planned, but it certainly worked out for us!

I read to Fina "The Story of a Warrior Queen" (Boadicea, the Briton Queen from circa 60 CE) from Our Island Story. She narrated it well. We learned about poisoning (which Fina was quite interested in!), Boadicea poisons her daughters and herself rather than allowing themselves to be captured by the Romans.

Next, I read "How the Rhinoceros Got his Skin" from Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories. For some reason, I decide to skim through the introduction, and we read that he would tell these stories (before ever having written them down) to his daughter Josephine (nicknamed "Effie." One of Fina's aunts calls her Effie) and that he had to say them "Just So" without any changes, or she could correct him. Ring a bell, anyone? She narrated it well. It is a very cute and funny story.

This is how we recite poetry around here, crawling around while dusting the floor!

Fina practiced reciting "The Cow" for me, as tomorrow is our first CM Co-op meeting and the kids will all be reciting something at it. She also recited all her other poems. They we learned the second stanza of "Night and Day/" She now can recite stanzas 1 and 2 of that poem. It is incredible how she can memorize things, and yet keep her other poems straight. We also read a new poem, "The Gardener."

We read chapter 7 of Paddle to the Sea, in which a French-Canadian lumberjack finds Paddle and rescues him from the log just as it is about to go under the saw in the mill. He adds a line to Paddle's engraving and sets him back in the river (deciding not to bring him home to show his young son Henri who would have likely pitched a fit, wanting to keep Paddle for himself. Ring a bell, anyone?)

We also recapped our cursive, writing a few more words with the letter f in them.

Forgive the poor pic quality!

Our white board is working well as a place to keep all our cursive letters. I don't have a fancy border going around the room or anything like that, I just add the new letter to the top of the white board and it is always there for Fina to refer to and look at.

Now Fina is doing/building/making something (?) behind our living room curtains, while listening to Brahms.

Well, our school day went well today. I am still remiss in the feast subjects. I may have to start some kind of morning time, so I can fit in the hymn, folksong, foreign language study and artist study and other things like that.

November 16, AO year 1, week 8 (in a prolonged incarnation!)

We have an exciting week in store!

Monday (yesterday, sorry I was late to post!): we are having one our little friends L over to play. She goes to public school and has the day off. She is bringing her 18" doll Kyla. Kyla and Fina's doll Christie are going to have a wonderful day together, I'm sure. And we got some outdoor play with L's siblings afterwards as well. A lovely day!

Tuesday: mom's group and our outdoor play group.

Wednesday: we will do some school work and possibly go to French story time at our local library. Fina was asking about going back to it.

Thursday: should be our first CM homeschool co-op meeting. We hope that will be a great day!

Friday: some more school work etc.

Life is so busy. I am so grateful I don't work outside the home and that Fina schools at home. How would we ever find the time to work and go to school with such a busy life we have!

I am trying to work on being grateful for the life we have. I am having a hard time right now, being a bit resentful of some things, and I have to get over it, because it isn't fair of me.

November 15

On Friday, we did this and that (some Brahms and free-reading, and lots of Lego, thrown in the mix) and spent some time outside in the afternoon. The weather is incredible for MB at this time of the year, and we fully intend to take advantage of it.

On Saturday, we spent 6 hours outside. It was 11 degrees celsius, sunny with next to no wind. We got to spend some of that time outside with friends on this hay stack in a field just on the edge of town. The girls had so much fun, pretending the hay stack was a nest, digging in it to make a little area for the eggs (or the birds) to nest in, and just climbing and rolling around on it.

And yes, they found some ice! Fina has been on a hunt for ice lately, and we have found some on a few occasions. We are really waiting for snow (well, she is anyway!)

I'm having a hard time with the whole I-don't-drive thing right now (I don't usually care, but living in a small town where you can't get anywhere without driving, it can be difficult at times. If we lived in a city, we could certainly get around on our own by bus etc.  And when we do go in to the city for church and for shopping, it is hard to carve out the kind of time I'd like to spend in places of nature. I'm a bit sad about it right now. Send me positive thoughts), so I am so grateful that I have a haystack (and other fun places) where Fina can play with her friends within walking distance of home. If only they would fix the ski bridge so we could get in to the forest. This would have been the perfect year for it, but we can't cross the creek into the forest here in town until the creek freezes because the bank around the bridge has eroded and they have closed the bridge. See why we look forward to winter?

Off to our regular Sunday routine now. Into the city we go. Missing out on another warm and sunny day (though the forecast calls for a windy day).

A shout out to zia C, whose birthday it is today! We love you lots!

Stay tuned for my next post. School is flexible right now, but life keeps going!

UPDATED: We didn't miss out on the lovely day. Dad took us to Bois des Esprits, a lovely protected urban forest area, where a local artist has carved a bunch of logs and tree stumps throughout. So fun!
We even saw a few deer, including a big buck! We didn't get a pic of him, but it was incredible.

Fina and I LOVE this place. We have been twice with dad and once with our friends J and J. To think that we lived 4 kms away from this place when we lived in the 'Peg and that even now we do a lot of our grocery shopping at the grocery store across the street. I only learned about this place a few months ago.

Leading up to November 12

We had a lovely afternoon on Monday, listening to our free read on a picnic blanket in the park. I think it got to 12 degrees, but it was so sunny and not at all windy. Just incredible!

We got a chance to play with our friends too, with wood chips left over from the outdoor exercise equipment that was just installed in our park.

Over just a few days, Fina listened to the entire Little House in the Big Woods book, from her free read list. And I didn't have to read it myself.

**********

I feel like I have had a revelation. I want to slow our schooling down a bit. I feel like we are rushing with our readings, just to complete the week, and that is not what I want to do. I'm going to restructure my thinking. I hadn't intended on starting formal schooling so early. It was Fina's idea to start when all her friends were starting. I really want to buy Laying Down the Rails and do some of that with her. I do feel like habit training is lacking. And I also want to focus more on the feast subjects. Certainly the point of homeschooling isn't to do things just to get them done!  What a liberating revelation!!!  School isn't even mandatory in Manitoba until the September of the year the child turns 7. That gives me 10 more months!  I am thinking math and cursive regularly, but the rest to be spread over many more than 4 days per week. Probably 6 or 7 or even 8 days. Whatever it takes to leave more time for finger knitting, hymns, artist study, foreign language, composer study, folksongs, Lego, play time at home! We try to spend lots of time outside and Fina sometimes feels like she doesn't get to play much at home, because she is doing school work when we are in and then spending time outside of the home. Imagine me, rushing her around. Not what I want to do, for sure. I'm going to give her more time to play, by spreading our readings out much farther.

I did read Better Late Than Early by the Moore's a few years ago (loaned to me by one of my early homeschooling benefactresses, DH), and, in some ways, the title says it all.  I think I have done that with Fina, by not pushing her to write, or to do math, or to sit for extended periods of time, giving her freedom to wander and giving her space for imaginative play. I haven't taught her to read even now at 6 years old. But I think I can continue the principal into the early schooling years, by taking it slow. Savouring the feast. Not rushing through "weeks." I think I can make it work!

**********
Yesterday was Remembrance Day here in Canada, and we took part in the ceremony in our town. We had many discussions throughout the day about war and peace and sacrifice.  A lot of learning, speaking, and thinking.

Today is Thursday November 12, and we just had to hollow out and carve the giant pumpkin we picked just before Halloween! We did lots of Lego and Fina also made a haunted house area for her pumpkin.  We read some books, coloured, and recited some poetry.

And it SNOWED. Fina tried putting out a bowl to gather enough snow to make "tire sur la neige" maple taffy. Not quite!

We did lots of fun "around the house" type of things. I feel like we both needed a regular day like this.

November 9, AO year 1, week 8 continued

We are still not completely over our colds, but we are much better. We have some beautiful fall weather today (high of 12 celsius, very warm for MB) so we will be heading outside for lunch time to spend the afternoon outside, and hopefully we will be able to go for a night-time walk with dad. The sun sets so early right now and since it will be not cold and clear skies, we hope to enjoy a walk to see the stars.

Our good friend L gifted us with a free mp3 copy of "Seeds of Courage" from seedsfamilyworship.com.  I would encourage you to check them out. The songs have the Bible chapter and verse titles built right into the lyrics. We are just listening to them randomly during the day. I am not using them "intentionally," I'm just hoping Fina picks up the chapter and verses by just listening and singing along. They are really fun!

We have also been trying to read one chapter from the bible each evening after supper.

Fina has been working on her finger knitting. And lots of random crafting of this and that. She is being creative just on her own. And she has been enjoying her yoga. Because the weather has been so favourable, we have also been trying to go for a walk as a family each day. We have fancy new exercise equipment that was just installed in our park, so we have been trying that out. Fina loves the spinny stretching thing.

Today, we started with our morning prayer. Fina has taken to listening to Zecchino d'Oro during breakfast and today's pre-breakfast Lego building time as well.

We read the second half of the chapter on St Patrick. Not so much with the narration. I do find that Amy Steedman's Our Island Saints are very well written, but the language can be complicated at times. I think Fina got the basic story of St Patrick, so that is good enough for now!

We started reading Hudson by Janice Weaver.  Henry Husdon was an explorer (Hudson Bay was named after him). We read about how he tried to find a navigable passage from England up through the north pole to Asia in 1607. He couldn't find an unfrozen passage, but ended up finding a bay full of whales in Spitsbergen (northern island belonging to Norway) and by the 1630, a thousand ships were going there a year to exploit the riches of the whales (blubber and bone for corsets etc).  I like this book. Again, hard to narrate from, but fuel for much discussion, map work, learning about explorers etc. It was the most fruitful 30 minutes we have had, though not immediately quantifiable in terms of checking off boxes on our homeschool work. It was great!  We got to page 18.  The books is meant to be read over three weeks.

Fina recited some of her poetry to me and we read a new poem, "The Dumb Soldier."

We also were able to do chapter 5 of our Catechism. We learned about the liturgical year, ordinary time and God's creation.

That is it for us for week 8. Tomorrow we have our outdoor playgroup, and Wednesday is Remembrance Day here in Canada. So I guess week 9 will begin on Thursday for us.

Off to enjoy the great outdoors. Thanking God for his creation!

November 6, AO year 1, week 8

Yesterday, Fina did indeed end up spending much more time than I had anticipated in learning to finger knit. She was able to pick it up easily, right away. She even knows how to "cast on" herself, which is far beyond what I had hoped. She ended up doing two one-metre lengths of finger knitting. Her intention is to make a rectangular carpet (try as I might to convince her to start with something smaller, like a rounded coaster or placemat, or tiny carpet). She worked at it for over an hour for sure.

As an aside, she was listening to The House at Pooh Corner read by Peter Dennis.  We are listening to it on overdrive, borrowed from the MB libraries. It is an excellent version. This is a quote from overdrive:

This is the only reading of these enthralling stories authorized by A. A. Milne's son, Christopher Robin, who wrote, "Peter Dennis has made himself Pooh's Ambassador Extraordinary and no bear has ever had a more devoted friend. So if you want to meet the real Pooh, the bear I knew, the bear my father wrote about, listen to Peter."

We have also heard his volume 1 of Winnie the Pooh. We also enjoy Stephen Fry's dramatization (with many actors playing the voices, including Judy Densch.) Also very well done. I highly recommend both of them. If you can get them on overdrive through your library, go for it!

Anyway, here are some pics of Fina's finger knitting work.

Here she is wearing the two lengths of finger knitting that she made.

She also spent some time last night doing some pencil drawing. The excitement was that she use her newly-acquired kneadable eraser (we bought an Artist's Loft one, from Michael's store in Canada for $2.29, still quite cheap).  I have never used one before, but it is very exciting.  No erasing crumbs, no ripped paper, fun to play with and you can also do this cool thing with it:

She drew the entire sock, and then used a technique called subtractive drawing, where you mold and shape your kneaded eraser to erase or remove some of the pencil, to leave different gradations of pencil.  You can make stripes! Very fun. Check out this video for how to use the eraser. We are waiting on a friend to save some water bottle caps for us to use for storing our kneaded eraser in, so it doesn't collect as much stuff in it when you throw it in a pencil case. We got the idea from this video.

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We listened to some Brahms this morning.
She did one episode of cosmickidsyoga.com.

We also did our morning prayer together.  We are feeling much better (not 100%, but much improved) after a good night's sleep.

She has been asking to read more stories from The Blue Fairy Book, so we read Charles Perrault's short fairy tale "Toads and Diamonds." A cute story that Fina narrated very well.

Then we read "Cincinnatus" from Fifty Famous Stories Retold. She narrated it in three chunks. Funny that I have never even heard of this figure of Roman history.  Cincinnatus was a wise and noble Roman who lived as a farmer. When the Roman army had been trapped by "a tribe of half-wild men," the white-haired fathers of Rome asked him to take the boys and guards who had stayed in the city to go and rescue the Roman army. He was the ruler of Rome for 16 days, and in those 16 days he saved Rome.  He then relinquished his power and went back to his life as a farmer.

The we went back to The Blue Fairy Book and read "Prince Darling." I told Fina it was a long story and if she was sure she wanted to do it now, but she did. It is a wonderful fairy tale, new to me as well.  So, I read the whole thing and she narrated it well. It deals with the virtue of keeping to your word and being in the habit of doing good. A very CM friendly fairy tale, I thought.

Fina wanted a "recess", so she did another two episodes of yoga. I think all the being-inside-because-we-are-sick is leaving her longing for physical activity!

Well, we didn't finish week 8, though we schooled 5 days this week! They were lighter days as we were sick. So we will try to finish up on Monday.

November 5, AO year 1, week 8

We are still both very sick.  We both have coughs now, that are hopefully breaking up. I have resorted to drinking garlic tea with honey and lemon. Don't come near me for a while. That being said, I'm trying to do as little talking as possible (which is fine, Fina usually talks enough for the both of us anyway!).

So, we started with finishing up our "solving for the unknown" chapter in math. MUS 21B-F. She is doing really well with this. We took a sneak peek at the next chapter, which is skip counting by 5.

We continued on working on the cursive letter f. It is tricky, but she is getting better. We wrote "flat." Some are better than others. But she is enjoying it. It is difficult to learn what spacing works, so I keep trying to talk her through it (once you are at the top of the f, go straight down). One she has the letter, though, she can do it herself. It is a slow process. But I am enjoying it and so is she.

We read two Aesop Fables "The Gnat and the Bull" and "The Plane Tree." She narrated both very well.

She recited "The Cow" for me and her first stanza of "Night and Day." We couldn't do more than that. We were both coughing.

Now, I want to give her a head start on finger knitting. I will be leading that at our Homeschooling Co-op group, and I want her to know what she is doing so I can help the others.  She also said she wants to do some loom knitting today.

One of our free reads for year 1 is Laura Ingalls Wilder's The Little House in the Big Woods. We have the whole series on audiobook, read by Cherry Jones, so we will listen to that this afternoon, while following along in the actual book to enjoy the illustrations together.  Fina has listened to the entire series, but in snippets on her own, or while I brush and floss her teeth. We have never read it from the book. Since I have no voice today, following along with the audiobook is the next best thing for us.

Thanks for reading!

November 4, AO year 1, week 8

Boy, we have had an exciting day over here so far. Friends of ours have pinworms (so we have been doing laundry etc in the hope of not getting them) and I paid a visit to our local, friendly pharmacist in an effort to keep our local group of moms informed. A HSing mom friend of ours L has put her back out and has had to go to the hospital (praying for you L), and this same mom and two of her kids are in our homeschooling co-op that might not start tomorrow. Dad delayed his departure this morning in order to watch (some of) the swearing in ceremony of Prime Minister Trudeau and his cabinet ministers. Fina and I are both still sick, though it seems that our congestion is breaking up (thanks, in part I am sure, to L's donating us a few drops of her Sniff B Gone essential oil blend that I have mixed into some coconut oil.  Think like Vicks, but so yummy tasting that you almost want to eat it!).

We have yet to get any school work done. It might just be one of those days (and I'm not the one directly affected and impacted by most of the things I just listed above, so if you are the praying type, please pray for these situations).

So, today we spent a long time doing math. Fina wanted to get to the next chapter, "Solving for the unknown," probably just because it sounded mysterious. So she finished her whole chapter of adding hundreds. 20C-F. Then 21A and B. Solving for the unknown up to 10. So x+5=10. She did really well with it. I was impressed. This is probably not the best way to do math, but I figured today was kind of an all-over-the-place day anyway, so it was ok, as long as she was enjoying it. She still has a bit of trouble when reviewing skip counting by 2, getting mixed up with 12 and 20, and sometimes 14. We will continue with it!

We spent just a few minutes writing her cursive letter f. And that is it for us today.

November 3, AO year 1, week 8

It was supposed to be a no-schooling day today, but since Fina is still quite sick, we didn't want to go to the indoor playgroup we usually attend on Tuesdays, so as not to spread our germs. We will go to the outdoor playgroup in the afternoon, because germs are much harder to spread outside!!!

Anyway, we decided to do a bit of school work. We finished up 19F in math and started chapter 20, adding hundreds together.  We did 20A and B. She is doing well.

We also learned a new cursive letter, the letter f.  It is a tricky one, as it is the first one that goes below the line.  She is trying hard.

Today showed me something. It took us 40 minutes to do just these two things.  Even when she is not frustrated or complaining or fussing, it still takes her a lot of time to accomplish things. Just because she is always wandering around in her mind. Wanting water, thinking of questions to ask, stopping to go to lalaland!

So, other homeschoolers: take heart!!!

Update: Oh my, I just looked ahead at our math curriculum. The next chapter is solving for the unknown. "? + 6 = 9." That will be interesting!  I'm a bit afraid, but I will just trust the process.

November 2, AO year 1, week 8

Well, we spent 1084 hours outside over the last year!  I'm very pleased that we actually got past the 1000 hours mark. I wasn't sure we would be able to get there, but we did!

Our new year started on November 1, with 0 hours outside, due to a chilly, dreary and gray Sunday (boy am I happy I don't live in BC. I would love the mild temperatures, but I don't think I could do gloomy for very long. We have many sunny days here in soon-to-be-frigid Manitoba!) and Fina having a bad cough and cold!

Here we are at week 8 of our first year of homeschooling.  I feel so blessed to have gathered an entire network of homeschoolers around me (seemingly all of a sudden). Some are here in town, others are not so very far away. A year ago, this network was not formed, and yet, here we are.  Let me encourage you. You might not think you will have homeschooling people around you, or parents who share your same ideals and values, but take a good look around and be open.  (Homeschooling or not. I am also so happy to have gathered an entire outdoor playgroup network of people as well. Again, you may think it is hard to find people willing to play outside, especially when you see the park etc empty, all the time. But look hard enough and be open, and you can find like-minded mamas!)
I am so happy!

Fina is pretty sick, but we will do some school work just the same.
We started with our morning prayer. Today is the day we remember all the people in our lives who have died. We remembered nonno Bis and baby Celeste Flavia. We lit a candle and remembered what we could about them (Fina didn't meet either of them, but those are the closest deaths she knows anything about).

On to section 19 of our Math - skip counting by 10s. She is doing well with this concept. We got to 100. There was a big chart that when to 100 and she wanted to test it out to see if it ACTUALLY is 100. So, she counted it patiently, one square at a time. And yes, in fact, it IS 100. It was incredible to watch! (Inquisitive minds want to know. I LOVE it!!!) She did all but the last page of section 19.

I wanted her to finish up the 19F, but she didn't want to, so it is better that we left it there!

We read Exodus 2:1-10 and Fina narrated - the story of Moses being put in the river in a basket. (This was her favourite story when she was a toddler).

We reread some poems from A Child's Garden of Verses." She learned the first stanza of "Night and Day" which is as follows:

When the golden day is done,
Through the closing portal,
Child and garden, flower and sun,
Vanish all things mortal.

She learned it quite quickly. We also read "The Flowers" and "Summer Sun."

On to the cursive letter c.  We can write cat, can, cab, cast, call and caw. She did a great (and stress-free and frustration-free, yay!) job with her letter c.

We read chapter 4 of The Burgess Bird Book, "Chippy, Sweetvoice and Dotty." Shout out of thanks to our friend E and her son S who loaned us their reprint copy of the book!

It is so funny that we seem to have less frustrations and fewer problems with our school work when Fina is sick. She just doesn't have the energy to fuss, I guess!

Sometimes I have trouble gauging (yes, I had to look that spelling up. "Gauging" is the Canadian / British spelling of the American "gaging." Both look strange written out to me, but I pronounce it with a long A) how much she is learning in a day. The good thing is I know she is retaining it, as much of what we learns comes up at the dinner table or other times throughout our days. I feel like we could do more in a day, but that might come at the expense of learning. I am happy with how today went. The flow was pretty good and there was a definite lack of frustration. So that is great. I am sure as we continue, we will be able to accomplish more and more in one day.