December 14, AO year 1, week 10

On Sunday morning, Fina (basically) learned the second passage from Ken Ludwig's book, Teach Your Children Shakespeare.  Also from "A Midsummer Night's Dream." It is a passage that Puck says in Act III, scene 2.  It is incredible how quickly she can memorize and recite a passage.

Captain of our fairy band,
Helena is here at hand,
And the youth, mistook by me,
Pleading for a lover’s fee.
Shall we their fond pageant see?
Lord, what fools these mortals be!

We also learned this short bonus passage of Puck's. The author says to use it whenever we are in a hurry! Fina learned it right away as well.

I go, I go, look how I go,
Swifter than arrow from the Tartar’s bow.

While I am at it, I should provide you with the text of the first passage she memorized from Act II, scene 1 of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite overcanopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet muskroses, and with eglantine.
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lulled in these flowers with dances and delight.
And there the snake throws her enameled skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in.
And with the juice of this I’ll streak her eyes
And make her full of hateful fantasies.

A great shout-out goes to our friend L., who introduced us to this book. Fina loves learning Shakespeare.  She asked to learn the second passage. She is also really enjoying the retold stories from Shakespeare we have read. She has told me that she asked her little friend K if she had ever heard of Shakespeare. Poor K answered no. (She is only 5, of course! But they share this love of Narnia, so I guess Fina thought K would be familiar with all good literature!) so Fina recited the "I know a bank..." passage to her. And told her all about the story. So wonderful!

She says she wants to teach something at our next co-op meeting. She wants to teach her friends how to draw a Chi-Rho.  Ha! But she is worried that the moms will laugh. Which is so strange because E and L have done nothing but make her feel comfortable. All the adults she knows have done the same. She has never suffered ridicule from adults, at least adults unrelated to her. We will see if she does it. I told her it would be nice.

Before breakfast this morning, we received a desperate cry for help from our kindly local librarian. So, I rushed around like a whirlwind preparing this and that in order to arrive at the library by 9. We were only a couple of minutes late.

The drop-off bin was jam packed! So Fina spent an hour emptying it and then checking in the books at the circulation desk. She loves that!

We did get do the entire chapter of math, chapter 25, the area of rectangles, by skip counting.
She sat and flipped through books for a good long while. She also combined her Math-U-See blocks with the Rush Hour game and played with all of that.

We got to the park on my lunch break for about 45 minutes.

An exceedingly light day for school. I had hoped to do some cursive, but the library was so busy in the morning, we just didn't get to it.

Our kind friends J and J came to pick Fina up at 2:45 to take her to the park for some more play time while I finished up at the library. So that was great!

That is it for today. We have our outdoor playgroup tomorrow afternoon, which is always fun.