Leading up to January 8

On Tuesday January 5, we did "this and that" at home in the morning and then went to our outdoor playgroup in the afternoon.  We were a small group, but we had so much fun. We went down on to the creek and the kids found a bicycle half frozen into the creek and they spent probably an hour trying to chip it out. Our friend T was able to make quite a hole in the ice. They all used long sticks to try to measure how deep the water was and it was just wonderful.

On Wednesday morning, as Fina was colouring my nails with pencil crayon in her newly built nail salon (!), she learned Bottom's Dream from A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act IV, Scene 1, lines 214-26.

I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream past the wit of man to say what dream it was. Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream.… The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream. It shall be called “Bottom’s Dream” because it hath no bottom.

Aside from her bad attitude (I fear this will be a trope throughout the life of my blog, and hopefully not through Fina's actual life, though we will continue to work on it), she was able to recite the whole thing in less than ten minutes. I can not recite it. She certainly can! Nonna would say B-R-A-T!!!

Today is the actual feast of the Ephiphany, though the Canadian church celebrated it on Sunday, and the wise men made their way to our little nativity set.

Later on (after public school let out), she had a lovely indoor and outdoor playtime with her good friend K across the street, and was even invited in for dinner with them. My little girl is growing up. They had a wonderful time! Here they are playing outside with K's little sister C.  I can't say how important these friendships forged in our little town are to us.

On Thursday, January 7, we did our christmas catechism. Chapter 6 is about God sending Jesus to us and about the Holy Family. We also did the art section on p 218. We also did the Christmas section in the liturgical year part of our book, p 157-160.
She cuddled in bed with dad for a long while, reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and also from A Bear Called Paddington.

Fina and I got out for (nearly) three hours. We had lunch up on the top of a snow hill and then wandered around town and stopped and played in various spots. She again worked on a never-ending igloo.

When we came in, she did a whole bunch of Lego.

On Friday, we read the entire The King of the Golden River by John Ruskin. What a great story. It is from our free-read list.  Fina asked to read something from Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories, so we read "How the Leopard got his Spots" and I had Fina narrate it. It is from week 12, but since she asked, we read it.

We also read the first two fairy tales from The Red Fairy Book, edited by Andrew Lang. This is also from our free-read list.  Fina loves the fairy tales from his The Blue Fairy Book that is scheduled in our readings, and has so much enjoyed the Fairy Tales from Norway that I thought I should give her more fairy tales.

It was a stay-indoors-and-read type of day. Fina also had some Lego going on and off all day.