February 3, AO year 1, week 12

I know someone is reading my blog. I'd love to receive a comment every once in a while. Just sayin'!

Yesterday we had our outdoor playgroup and had a fun time, all said. Some of the kids managed to get their feet into the only unfrozen patches on our creek. Miraculously, Fina wasn't one of them. She is probably the only one who came home with dry mitts and boots!!! (Maybe she was more cautious, because she was sick. Or maybe she just enjoyed bossing the boys around. Cute T stuck his mitted hand right down into the running creek to pull out a clam shell for her!)

We started our day with singing "Home on the Range."

I read "East of the Sun and West of the Moon" from The Blue Fairy Book.  (We had read it in the Norwegian Fairy Tales book.) We reread it and Fina narrated it to me.

We started our new hymn, "Jesus, Hope of the World." We sang through verse 1.

We did some recitation from our memorization box. I had Fina recite one poem from the A Child's Garden of Verses section, one from the When We Were Very Young section, one from the Shakespeare section. She also recited the two newest ones we are working on, both from Shakespeare.

Then we read the poem "Brownie" from When We Were Very Young and I added it to our memorization box. Fina learned the first stanza and is able to recite it. We also read the next poem, "Independence."

I read chapter 6 of The Burgess Bird Book and Fina narrated it back to me. We found youtube videos to see and hear the two birds: Dear Me the Phoebe, and Chebec the Least Flycatcher.

I read a small portion of our Italian kids' bible, the start of the story of Abraham, while Fina had a little snack and a glass of milk.

We finished the "Unknown Land" chapter from the modern translation of Parables from Nature.  What she gave me was not a "great" narration, but it was fine.

I read the story of "Arnold Winkelried" from Fifty Famous Stories Retold. It is about a poor man who is able to defend Switzerland from a great army by running in to the army and breaking their ranks. He dies, but the Swiss are victorious.  We looked up Switzerland on the map and on the globe.

I read two fables, "The Boys and the Frogs" (be sure your fun isn't hurtful to someone else) and "The Crow and the Pitcher" (how to use your brain when you are in a pinch) from Aesop's Fables.  The very thirsty crow can't reach the water in a tall pitcher, so he throws stones into the pitcher until the water rises and he can drink.  Fina wanted to try a water displacement experiment of her own.

with a cup of water and marbles - water displacement

While she did that, we listened to some Brahms.  We also did a few pages of math from the extra book.