January 18, AO year 1, week 10

We started the morning with Fina's request to listen to some Zecchino D'oro, while she planned costumes for Helena and Hermia from A Midsummer Night's Dream. She has gotten it into her head that she wants to put on a play. I'm not sure with whom she plans on doing this: if it is for co-op or just with her friend K. We shall see how that progresses! She is certainly working hard.

We prayed the Lord's Prayer together(-ish). I read a bit from it Italian bible. We sang "Canticle of the Turning" (Gather, 527). We sang the first verse and the refrain. I think we'll stick with this one for a bit. The hope is that she will join in more and more.

She recited her four Shakespeare passages to me. She does an excellent job with that.

Fina did a couple of episodes of her cosmickids.com yoga.

We started reading from When We Were Very Young by A.A. Milne. We have this big collection of Winnie the Pooh that includes both story books and both poetry books.  We read the first two poems, "Corner-of-the-Street" and "Buckingham Palace."  We also borrowed the audio book on Overdrive, read by Peter Dennis, and listened to his readings of the two poems as our second read through. Then we looked up a photograph of Buckingham palace and talked about how the Queen lives there.

I read "King Alfred and the Beggar" from Fifty Famous Stories Retold and Fina did an excellent job narrating it to me.

I read the story of the spies to Canaan and the grapes from Numbers 13:1-14:9. She also narrated that well enough.

I thought it was high time to start some folksongs, so I found this version of "Home on the Range" (sung by Gene Autry) and I sang along to it. Fina recognized it because my brother has sung a different, funny version to her. So she enjoyed that. We will stick to this folk song for a little while, I think.

We did our next lesson of math, session 27, just the hours in telling time. We reviewed minutes and she did a great job with that. Next, we will do hours AND minutes.

I read one story from The Red Fairy Book, her current free read. I read "Jack and the Beanstalk." It was great. Right at the start, someone has "fever and ague." We had heard about that in The Little House on the Prairies series, and we looked it up and it is malaria.  And then Fina remembered that in Hudson the sailors got malaria from not eating enough fresh fruits and vegetables. Charlotte Mason would call this the science of relations. I love when these types of connections are made.

We had a great start back in earnest today. I carefully avoided all writing with a utensil today. We need to keep working on that pincer grip and I didn't want to tackle that today, so I wrote down her math for her.