AO year 1, week 22, December 15

We read another bunch of chapters from Olga da Polga and we are quite enjoying them.

We listened to some Schubert this morning over breakfast.

We started with reading about the Knights of the Round Table from Our Island Story. Fina have a great narration.

We looked again at our picture study from last week, "Napoleon Crossing the Alps" by Jacques-Louis David. Fina looked at it for a few minutes in "silence" and then I turned it over and she drew this from memory.

I had her review her recitations. And guess what? She was able to do the whole Parable of the Mustard Seed on her own, without prompting. Maybe the "read it a bunch of times together" system really does work! I was completely floored!

She learned the cursive J.  I do like her cursive a lot.

We read another poem from The Oxford Book of Children's Verse, entitled "Cradle Hymn," a lovely poem about a child and about baby Jesus.

We sang "She's Like the Swallow," our current folksong. Fina knows the first verse.

We did a bit of 11B and 11C of our math, and all of lesson 11D. It is mainly review, which is good.

Fina read pages 42-45 of Tony's Birds aloud to me.

Then she did some drawing / painting / nature study (we'll call it) from the bird that Tony was seeing in the story.  Two tiny, lovely little paintings. I didn't get a proper photo of them and she has put them away "sorry, mom, I'm saving them for Christmas" but I can show you this photo of her while she was painting. We listened to some more Schubert while she painted and I prepared lunch.

We finished our week in three days, somehow, which is great, because I want to start week 23 right away and try to get in another good bit of school before Christmas.

We went out to play with our good friends J and J in the afternoon.  A wonderful day!

AO year 1, week 22, December 14

Yesterday evening, we read Blossom Comes Home by James Herriot and Fina narrated throughout.

We started reading Olga da Polga by Michael Bond (who authored Paddington). It is a cute story about a guinea pig.

We have also continued reading from The Pink Fairy Book, our other free read.

This morning, we listened to some Schubert over breakfast.

We started our new folksong, "She's Like the Swallow." It is a Canadian folksong (from Newfoundland). I had never actually heard it before, though I remember there being a piano piece based on it in one of my piano books. The lyrics are terrible. I think we'll stick to verses 1-3 and forget about the betrayal and the girl dying. All the youtube videos I found of it were very slow and dreary (no wonder!) and Fina didn't like them. So we just sing it ourselves at a nice pace!  I got the song from this lovely collection of folksongs which I borrowed from the library, The Penguin Book of Canadian Folksongs, edited by Edith Fowke. It has the melody and the lyrics.

Fina completed her unit exam in math. She did a great job. We also started our next lesson, lesson 11 about shapes and skip counting by 2s. Both these things are review from last year and she flew through lesson 11A.

I read Luke 1:5-20, 57-66 (the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth and John) and Fina narrated it very well.

We sang our hymn, "O Come, O Come Emmanuel."

I read the story of "The Vain Jackdaw and the Borrowed Feathers" from Aesop's Fables and Fina narrated it.

We worked on our recitation. Fina now knows the "What is love?" speech from Twelfth Night.  I read chapter 17 from How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare, the chapter pertaining to this passage.
We continued to work on the Parable of the Mustard Seed.

Fina reviewed her upper case cursive letters and we learned the letter I.

Her cursive is really good. We will continue to work on doing our best at all times. But she has a nice hand, I think. Certainly better than mine!

We read a poem from The Oxford Book of Children's Verse.  We still haven't found one to memorize. But we are enjoying reading them. I usually reread the previous day's poems and then one (or more) new one.

Fina read pages 36-40 of Tony's Birds aloud to me. She is doing a great job!

We read chapter 10 of The Burgess Bird Book, about Redwing the Blackbird and Yellow Wing the Flicker (who is of the wood pecker family). We found both the birds online and listened to their calls.
I asked Fina if she wanted to paint one of the birds, but she is reluctant to pull out her watercolours. I am not concerned. I don't want to force her right now, so I'll let it be for a bit. She loves nature study. I think she is worried about painting an animal (we've mostly done flora this far), though this would be straight out of a field guide.

Fina did some Lego and played the afternoon away.

AO year 1, week 22, December 12

We have had a busy few days, with a Christmas banquet and a Christmas dinner with friends. Fina did a bit of finger knitting for a ribbon on a gift.

We started the day by reading one story from The Pink Fairy, our current free read. Dad has also been reading A Bear Called Paddington to Fina as her bedtime free read.

I read Matthew 1:18-24 and Fina narrated it. It is our gospel reading for this Sunday, the fourth Sunday of Advent.

We did the Liturgical Year section of our catechism book, including the Advent section (pages 151-156).

Fina read aloud the Parable of the Mustard Seed. Because she isn't such a strong reader yet, I think it is hard for her to memorize it this way. I will continue trying this method for the rest of the week and, if she still doesn't know it, we will do our regular "repeat one line three times" til you know it and then move on to the next line. It works well for Shakespeare.

Fina also recited "What is Love?" and "Out o' tune, sir" from Twelfth Night.

Fina did the first two pages of the Unit Exam #1 for Math. Two more pages to go. It reviews the first 10 lessons. She wanted the timer on, so I gave her 10 minutes. She was done in 7 minutes, so she used her remaining 3 minutes to catch up on some of her countdown-to-Christmas lego. (We have been busy these last few days and fell behind with it).

We read chapter 17 of Paddle to the Sea and Fina narrated it. I like how they equate Lake Michigan to a squash with leaves. It does kind of look like that, right?

We sang our folksong again, "My Paddle / Land of the Silver Birch."  Fina is singing along now, most of the time, which is great.

I read the story of "Maximillian and the Gooseherd" from Fifty Famous Stories. It was a funny story of a king who wasn't really able to care for some geese while the little gooseherd boy ran to fetch the King's book.  Fina gave a great narration.

I read "The Monkey and the Cat" from Aesop's Fables. Silly monkey, tricks the cat to scoop the chestnuts out of the fire by flattering her and then eats all the chestnuts and leaves nothing for the cat. Fina narrated it.

I read poems 45-47 from The Oxford Book of Children's Verse. Some are by Isaac Watts. We are still in the early section, but these poems are great fun! I think I did the right thing by skipping the first few chapters.

Fina reviewed her uppercase cursive letters, from A-G, and we learned the letter H. She is flying through these cursive letters!

We listened to some Schubert while Fina worked on her cursive.

Fina read four pages from Tony's Birds aloud to me. She laughed and laughed as Tony figured out that the bird was a Bluejay.

We sang "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" together.

Fina then did an episode of cosmic kids yoga. We hadn't done one in months, so it was good for her to get back into it.

Late in the afternoon, Fina went out to play for a few hours in the dark, freezing cold. She loved it!
At one point I saw her hanging from the top of a 1 metre snow pile, using sticks as climbing hooks and hanging from them in the snow, as if she were climbing the Alps, I guess! Fun!

AO year 1, week 21, December 9

On Thursday night, Fina participated in her first sacrament of reconciliation at our parish. It was wonderful. The pastor read the story of the Good Shepherd and gave a homily about that.  As the children returned from their sacrament, they each added a sheep to this little scene. It was lovely!

We listened to some Zecchino D'Oro this morning (Friday) over breakfast.

We sang "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" and caught up on our Jesse tree readings (we were two days behind).

Instead of cursive practice today, Fina wrote a couple of thank you cards for gifts received. We learned the upper case cursive M to write one of the recipients first name.

I read two new poems in The Oxford Book of Children's Verse and I reread the last three.
Fina recited her "What is Love?" from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and she pretty much has it memorized now. We read the Parable of the Mustard Seed aloud together.

We did chapter 10 from our catechism book speaking about Advent.
Fina took her math test for lesson 10. She only made a couple of errors (just careless mistakes, not actual comprehension problems). It was great.

We sang our folksong "My Paddle / Land of the Silver Birch."

Fina read a few pages of Tony's Birds aloud to her uncle on Facetime.

She spent the rest of the afternoon preparing her outfit and mask for a Christmas Banquet with a masquerade theme at dad's work.

AO year 1, week 21, December 8

Fina was out til 7:45pm again last night, in blizzard-y conditions, with her little friend K (and some other friends who came and went). They built a snowman!

We started our school day with reading through this cute book of poems, Whiskers & Rhymes by Arnold Lobel. It is very funny! You may know him as the author of the Frog and Toad series, which are also very funny. I think soon Fina will be able to read those on her own.

I read Daniel 6 (in the lions' den) and Fina gave an excellent narration.

I read the story of "St Margaret of Scotland" in Our Island Saints. I read the whole lengthy story and then Fina gave a short narration. It was a great story of a Queen who was a Saint.

Fina finished the last page of her math lesson, 10F. Next time she will take the test and then the unit test as well.

She finished learning her Shakespeare passage "What is love?"  We read the Parable of the Mustard seed aloud together.
We sang our folksong "My Paddle/Land of the Silver Birch" and our advent hymn "O Come, O Come Emmanuel."

Fina reviewed her upper case cursive letters and learned how to draw the G. Hers is really beautiful!

AO year 1, week 21, December 7

We did a shortened school day today. Dad was home because the university was closed. The schools are all closed. It is a real winter wonderland out there!

We started with Matthew 11:2-11.
Fina did lesson 10E of her math.
She read aloud a prayer from her catechism book.
She reviewed her recitation. I read the Parable of the Mustard Seed (I'm still hoping she will get it by osmosis, but she hasn't.  I'm thinking I'm doing this wrong and that we are supposed to read it aloud together, so I will type it out.)
She learned the fourth and fifth lines of "What is love?" from Twelfth Night. There is only one more line to learn from that passage.

Fina reviewed her upper case cursive letters A-E and we learned a fancy letter F.

I read chapter 16 of Paddle to the Sea. Paddle finally left Lake Superior. Very fun!

I read "The Mice and the Weasels" and "The World and the Lean Dog" from Aesop's Fables. Fina gave excellent narrations for both stories.

We read poems 39, 40 and 41 from our new poetry book, The Oxford Book of Children's Verse. I skipped the first stack of poems from the Medieval Era, and the 16th and 17th centuries. They felt a little dry and challenging after the lovely A.A. Milne poems. I think we'll come back to these earlier sections later on.

Fina read aloud six pages of Tony's Birds. She is doing a great job.

We sang our hymn, "O Come, O Come Emmanuel."

Then she went outside to play and has been out there for two hours already. I suspect this will be another long outside day. Which is great, because the forecast has the temperatures dipping below the -20 degree celsius mark. I'm glad she is taking advantage of it!

Here are the two tunnels they built last night, as seen in daylight. Pretty impressive!

December 6 outdoor day!

We had a wonderful snowy day yesterday (Wednesday December 6)!

Schools were closed yesterday and are still closed today. Our first big storm has brought terrible driving conditions. Highway 75 was closed since Tuesday at 6pm until just now, Wednesday at 3pm. 21 hours is a long closure!

This is what we woke up to yesterday.

Fina just had to go outside right after breakfast to play. One of our neighbours joined her for a bit.

We had to leave for our outdoor playgroup after an hour. I was hoping to have lunch before going, but she did not want to come in. So I packed her lunch in a thermos and off we went.

Fina and her friend K stopping at the town nativity scene on our walk to our playgroup location.

Because of school being closed, we also got out some of our "older" crowd (I'm talking grades 1 and 2 here!) kids who only come to outdoor playgroup on school holidays. It is always lovely having them with us.

We went sledding for a long while and then ventured into the forest.  The temperatures were mild (they are about to drop by 20 degrees celsius in the next few days) and the kids had a great time.

Fina is the only one with a bare head. (Second on the left)

Into the forest

The "tree fort" as they call it.

I am so grateful to have a group of people around me who value this kind of unstructured, outdoor play in such weather!

When we came home, Fina and the same K did not want to come in yet. They stayed out until 7:30 digging tunnels and caves in the snow pile in our parking lot.

Fina climbing through her tunnel.

Fina spent 9.5 hours outside. Incredible!

This morning, look at our birdfeeder. Fina is so happy that there is a little roof to shelter the birds. We haven't seen any birds yet, but we know the will come! The schools are still closed and so is the highway. But things seem to be calming down now.

AO year 1, week 21, December 5

We got this suction-cup-to-the-window bird feeder (thanks to my good friend L who gave me the heads up, free shipping and all), filled it with black oil sunflower seeds and stuck it to our back door. The perfect place for Fina to create a little Birdwatching Studio.

She wasn't sad. The pic is to show her sign. "Birdwatching only" 

She spent a long time on Sunday setting up her studio, complete with pencils, pencil crayons, sketch books, loose papers and all her field guides. We have the bird feeder in the perfect spot, because we can open the other French door and just stick our hand out to fill it. Fina sat there, quiet and still, for over a half an hour this morning, waiting to spot something, but no birds came. I believe that conventional wisdom suggests it can take a few days for the birds to come. We hope to see some soon.

We read the last three poems from Now We Are Six by A. A. Milne. All three were very cute. We are a bit sad to leave this poetry, but we are moving on to The Oxford Book of Children's Verse, edited by Iona and Peter Opie. I found this 1973 edition at a used book sale, so we are using that one.

Fina has been wanting to time her math lesson. In 10 minutes, she was able to complete one lesson, lesson 10D today.

I read "How Napoleon Crossed the Alps" from Fifty Famous Stories. A short story. Fina gave an excellent narration and recognized that we heard about his wife in "Picciola" from the same book just last week.  We looked at the map and the globe to see where the Alps are and how Napoleon crossed from France to Italy over them.  I showed Fina some photos of the Alps, which led to us looking at people taking pics of themselves on the peaks, which led us to watching a video of a group of people who climbed up the Alps. Fina said "one day, SF and I are going to climb up the Alps. We would love that. Is there anywhere in Manitoba where we can practice climbing up rocky mountains like that?"  Poor kid! No, we live in the Prairies!

We sang our Advent hymn. Fina learned the cursive letter E.

Fina worked on her recitations. She now knows the first 3 lines of "What is love?" from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.

And we did our next picture study, Jacques-Louis David's "Napoleon Crossing the Alps at the St Bernard Pass."

"This is Napoleon? The same Napoleon?" she says. How fun! She did a great job, seeing many details and really enjoying seeing the scene with the soldiers, the cannons and the horses.

Fina finished reading Plenty of Fish to me and we read another few pages of Tony's Birds. It is astounding at how she can read!

We listened to some Schubert over lunch (we have been neglecting our composer study since we returned home).

We spent the afternoon visiting a good friend of ours, and then Fina stayed out playing for quite a few hours.  We have snow now (and much more on the way this week, it seems) so she tried out her $3 thrift store plastic skis and her snow shoes from last year as well.

Fina also received some lovely gifts and $20 from a kind colleague of dad's. Fina had painted a painting for her office, entitled "Sparkly Cat." Wow, money for her art. Incredible!  I can't seem to find a photo of it, but I will get one and post it here when I am able. Again I say incredible. Fina said she will use her money for art supplies or towards a wood carving set that she wants.  Look out world!

AO year 1, week 20, December 2

We listened to some Zecchino D'Oro over breakfast.

We started with our math. Fina has been wanting to use a timer to do if she can get one lesson done in 10 minutes. She finished 10C just a few seconds after the timer rang.
Fina reluctantly tried her current recitation. She knows the first two lines (though she thinks she does not).
I read the next two poems from Now We Are Six, "Pinkle Purr" and "Wind on the Hill."

Fina learned her upper case cursive D. And we continued working on the C.

We did chapter 13 of her catechism, talking about forgiveness and reconciliation with God and with others.

We read all of Janet Lunn's Laura Secord: A Story of Courage. This is one of our three Canadian replacement biographies. We stopped throughout for Fina to narrate. She really enjoyed the story. The book has great illustrations and is written in a clear, yet exciting, way. I know it is a CM faux pas to read the whole thing in one sitting, but I chose to do it today. We don't often do that. We were both enjoying it and she was giving such good narrations.

Fina read aloud the next 5 pages from Tony's Birds.  She is reading very well.

When we bought the Lego Disney Castle, we got this Christmas build up set for free.  There are 24 little builds. We started it yesterday.  Here are day 1 and day 2's creations.

Sailboat

Reindeer (in front of our old Lego calendar)

Fina got to play outside with her friend K for a few hours in the evening.

We did our Jesse tree devotionals as a family after supper (we had to do yesterday and today's readings and ornaments since we missed it last night).  We have been singing "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" during the day as our hymn, but tonight we sang it as part of our advent family devotional time. Fina then wanted to read and sing all 7 verses for dad. It was incredible!

Then she pulled out two balls of yarn and taught dad how to fingerknit.

And they did some Lego work together as well. Now they are upstairs, in bed, reading Paddington.

We are finished up week 20 and I'm looking forward to week 21. I just noticed that even our chapter from Fifty Famous Stories is about Napoleon. You can't even plan this kind of serendipity. (Well, you can if you are doing unit studies, but this just happened!)

Thanks for joining us today.

AO year 1, week 20, December 1

I'm sorry I didn't get this post out yesterday! You will hopefully get two posts today.

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We read Isaiah 11:1-10 (the lion will lie down with the lamb) and Matthew 3:1-12 (John the Baptist) and Fina narrated both of them very well.
We continued on with our math (adding plus 8). Fina did 10B and the 10X.

I read two new poems from Now We Are Six: "Cradle Song" and "Waiting at the Window." We only have a few pages left of this collection. Fina loves them and often requests that I reread previous ones, even from weeks or months ago. She somehow remembers them, by content and by title (which surprises me every time!).

We learned upper case B and C in our cursive. She got to write some fun names of people she loves!

We sang through our current folksong "My Paddle / Land of the Silver Birch." We just sing through it once as a fun thing to do and then move on.

We repeated the first two lines of "What is love" from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. And I read through our mustard seed parable. Charlotte Mason (or her people) say that you can just read the parable once every day and the child will just learn it one day. I'm going to test that out. With Shakespeare and poetry, I always say one line and have Fina repeat that line three times (as suggested by Ken Ludwig in his book How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare) and that has always worked for us. But I thought I'd try this out with the parable. We will see how it goes.

Fina wanted to hammer a nail into a piece of wood with her dad's toy hammer from 40 years ago. It has a wooden handle and a hard plastic head. As she kept hitting her fingers, she thought she'd try to use her oven mitt (from her kitchen set - she still loves playing with that stuff). Somehow, she made it work and got the nail in to her little scrap of wood (which you can't see in the pic!).

I read "The Stag and his Reflection" and "The Peacock" from our Aesop's Fables and Fina gave excellent narrations for both.  I read "Picciola" from Fifty Famous Stories and she narrated that quite well.  It is the story of a wrongfully imprisoned person who befriends a little flower in the prison yard and in the end Napoleon's wife saves him. I'm looking forward to our next picture study, which is of Jacques-Louis David's "Napoleon Crossing the Alps!" She's going to love that!

I also borrowed Millicent Selsam's Tony's Birds from our provincial education library (homeschoolers in Manitoba are fortunate to have access to this library). Fina read a few pages of it aloud. We still haven't finished Selsam's Plenty of Fish, but I have that as an ebook which is a bit trickier for her to read. I highly recommend her Science I Can Read Series of easy reader books. They are wonderful.

We had an adult faith formation session at church in the evening, which was about reclaiming the adult meaning of Christmas. During the 90 minute session, Fina sat quietly colouring in her The Chronicles of Narnia Official Coloring Book a wonderful book, by the way!). Then she drew these two lovely works of art, inspired by pages in the book.  She was really well behaved and even listened in a bit. We had a nice discussion about what we had heard on our 50 minute drive home.

Enjoy!

We know it isn't the white witch saying such a kind thing to her dad!

AO year 1, week 20, November 30

A few more things from yesterday:

This is how we recite Shakespeare around here. 

I asked her to please open up a little hole near her head so I could hear her more clearly.

Fina painted all of the Jesse tree ornaments she had drawn. She did a great job!

For the last bunch of years, we used these free printable ornaments that the children can cut out and colour.  They are wonderful! And they do the "O Antiphons" on the last 7 days.

We attended our first outdoor playgroup since we have returned home. Fina just LOVED seeing all her friends and rambling around the forest with them. It was great. Here are some pics. (Check out the beaver's hard work.)

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Today, Fina started the morning with doing some Art For Kids Hub How to Draw episodes. She loves to draw. I have sung their praises before. Such fun stuff. Fina also listened to some Zecchino D'Oro songs while she worked.

I printed off a page from the Math-U-See worksheet generator for Fina to review her lesson 9 material (adding plus 9). She thought and acted as though she was frustrated, but she remembered her facts and did the page quickly.

We read the story of the three men in the fiery furnace from Daniel 3. I stopped various times and Fina gave an excellent narration throughout.

We started lesson 10, (adding plus 8) and Fina did 10A.

We pulled out Jacques-Louis David's "Death of Socrates" again, and Fina spent some time drawing from it. This is not what I would call a detailed drawing, but this was her rendition of what is going on.

The guy IS crying, and Socrates does have his finger pointing upwards! Ha!

We continued on with our cursive, learning the upper case letter A.

We sang our advent hymn, "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel."
We reviewed our last few recitations of Shakespeare. And we started our next passage, from Twelfth Night II, iii, 48-53, as spoken by Feste. Fina learned the first line today.

What is love? Tis not hereafter.
Present mirth hath present laughter.
     What's to come is still unsure.
In delay there lies no plenty,
Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty.
     Youth's a stuff will not endure.

I also read the parable of the Mustard Seed to her, from Matthew 13. My intention is for Fina to learn to recite it.

We read the next two poems, "Twice Times" and "The Morning Walk," from Now We Are Six.
I read chapter 9 from The Burgess Bird Book, about the woodcock and the sandpiper. We watched a few videos to see and hear the birds.

Fina read a few pages from Plenty of Fish. Her reading is really coming along nicely.
I read another story from our free read, The Pink Fairy Book.

Fina spent a bunch of hours playing outside with her friend T, and then K joined them after school. The sun goes down early, and they are enjoying playing outside in the low light!