Wednesday 30 March 2016

March 30, AO year 1, week 15

On Tuesday, we had a lovely get together in the big back yard of one of our friends. There were more than 20 kids there (it is Spring Break here in MB) and a bunch of moms. It was so wonderful! All in all, Fina and her friend K were out from 9:45am until 8:15pm.  We were at our friend's house from 10:30 until after 5 and then Fina and K had a quick something to eat and continued playing in our courtyard. Such a wonderful time! (This is the wonderful weather period between snow and mosquitoes in MB. You can't quite spend 10 hours outside in summer. Sometimes, but not always.

Today (on Wednesday) we started the morning listening to some Schubert while Fina did some drawing.

She used one of these "learn how to draw characters" books

We did some math work. Fina finished up Test 6, writing the numbers from 0-100.  She still has a tiny bit of confusion yet with 20, 21, 22, so we worked on that.

I read "The Ass and the Load of Salt" and "The Lion and the Gnat" from Aesop Fables. Fina narrated them well.

I read "Prince Hyacinth" from The Blue Fairy Book.  She enjoyed it, but gave a sort of mumbly narration.

We continued with our learning to read with Bob books. We finished reading pages 5-9 of book 1:6 "Dot and the Dog."  She is doing really well.

We worked through our memorization box. Fina learned the third line of the Orsino passage she is working on from Twelfth Night.

She did an episode of her yoga. It had been a long time. (When you spend so much time outside, you don't really need to do yoga as an exercise.)

Here is our  black turtle bean sprout. A new trifoliate leaf set has grown in the middle, plus a few other tiny ones. So fun!



We spent the afternoon playing outside with some friends, at various places around town.

Tomorrow we have our coop. We have the older PS siblings with us, so that will be fun!

Monday 28 March 2016

March 28, AO year 1, week 15

We had such a blessed holy week and Easter. Fina really enjoyed the liturgies this year. We were invited out to some friends' house from church. They have a daughter who is a year older than Fina. She had a great time and so did we.

We did a bit of school work this morning.
We started with our math test for chapter 6. She did fine with the addition etc, but she still needs a little work with the counting to 100.

We continued on with her reading. She read the first 4 pages of book 1:6. She is enjoying it.

We look chapter 9 of our catechism book as well as the section on Easter.

I read two new poems from When We Were Very Young: "The Mirror" and "Halfway Down." They were both cute.

We worked our way through her memorization box.  All of her passages are great. We started Orsino's passage from Twelfth Night "If music be the food of love, play on"." Fina memorized the first two lines.

Then Fina was very busy preparing for Rarity's birthday party.

Fina and her friend K have been playing outside all afternoon. They will come in for supper and for the party.

Very fun!

Thursday 24 March 2016

March 24, AO year 1, week 15

Today we did a bit of school work this morning.

We started again with our reading.  Short "i" as in "did."  We did the lessons and Fina was able to read book 1:5, "Dot and Mit."  She continues to enjoy it.

We sang through our current folksong. "When the Ice Worms Nest Again." We will have to change to our next one soon.

Fina did a lesson of math, 6F. Next time we will do the test for lesson 6 and move on to adding by 2.

I read from 1 Samuel 17:1-54 (David and Goliath) and Fina gave a good narration.

We reviewed the questions we have done so far from The Baltimore Catechism, 1-3 and 6. She knows them all, and even anticipated Question 6 before I asked it. Wonderful!

We worked through her Memorization box. She now has the newest Shakespeare passage memorized well.

It was a bit slow going today, but it was fine. We have a few things left to finish up week 15.  We will take a break now for Easter and finish up on Monday, hopefully.

We had a great afternoon out at our park with her little friend M. It was a lovely and sunny day, but there was a bit of a cold wind.

Happy Easter everyone!

Wednesday 23 March 2016

leading up to Wednesday March 23, AO year 1, week 15

Tuesday March 22

Fina was so excited about learning to read that we continued on to Book 1:2 ("Sam") and book 1:3 ("Dot").  It is great to see her so excited about reading. "I just discovered that all you have to do is sound out the letters. I never knew that," she said. Wonderful!

We spent a great afternoon with our outdoor playgroup. So muddy and so fun. (It was a bit chilly, but Fina had a great time!)

Here she is in the middle with a small section of our outdoor playgroup. Little piggies in the mud!

Wednesday March 23

Every morning we check on our bean plant. It is really coming along nicely! Fina enjoys talking about the trifoliate leaves and such.

Today we finished up our chapter on "St Bridget" in Our Island Saints which was scheduled last week. She didn't really narrate it.

She wanted me to read from our current free-read book, The Red Fairy Book. So I read "Twelve Brothers," "Rapunzel" and "Mother Holle." We both enjoyed these three fairy tales.

She asked to do her reading next, she is so excited!  We did book 1:4 ("Mac").  The new sound is the letter B: the lower case b is easily confused with upper case B. (Hence why cursive is better than print. No confusion there!!!)  She is really enjoying reading.

Next, I read "Whittington and the Cat" from Fifty Famous Stories Retold. We broke it up into the 5 chunks and she gave wonderful narrations! It is such a great story.

We worked through our memorization box. We finished the bonus passage from The Tempest I, v, 266-270.  She has it almost memorized now, she learns so quickly. Olivia's passage  "Thy tongue, thy face ... Even so quickly may one catch the plague?" She has stick-to-it-ness, that is for sure. She learned it by repeating it a bunch of times in 5 or 6 minutes.

I read a few poems to her from When We Were Very Young: "Shoes and Stockings," "Sand-between-the-toes" and "Little Bo-Peep and Little Boy Blue." She loves poetry.

We did chapter 18 of our catechism book, which talks about the Last Supper. And we did the holy week section at page 165 and following.

I put on some Schubert as we had lunch.

There are a bunch of things I'm trying to find time for during our week, such as working on some more creative writing, getting in some more time for painting and drawing, and I would like her to try to write her own poem. But I'll let her lead on that for now.

This afternoon, we are going outside to enjoy the sunshine (and hopefully a bike ride).

Thanks for joining us!

Monday 21 March 2016

March 21, AO year 1, week 15

Did I accidentally post my post of the books I am currently reading? I see that one visitor saw it. I'm sorry. It was not to post! (You did get a sneak peek into what I'm reading!)  I *thought* a draft blog post was a good place to keep info like that. Maybe I need to get myself a book, like the one I made for Fina.

We are watching our black turtle bean plant that we sprouted a few weeks ago. We watered it and observed it this morning. There are two sets of trifoliate leaves now and a tiny new set just starting to sprout.



Today, Fina is learning how to read!!!

We are using Brandy Vencel's blog "Teaching Reading with Bob Books." We did series 1 book 1 today (1:1). Fina now can read "sam, sat, on, mat" etc. She is SO excited and can't wait to read Narnia by herself. So far, so good!

We used our magnetic letters on a cookie sheet to learn and manipulate the letters. Then we did all 4 lessons that go with that first book.

Yikes, the bottom of this cookie sheet is not in good shape!


On to do some math. We continued with the counting to 100. She did 6E.

And a little bit of cursive. We reviewed some letters and tried working a bit more on the letter "o."

We worked through her memory box (her Shakespeare passages are really coming along) and we read a few new poems from When We Were Very Young: "The Wrong House," "Summer Afternoon" and "The Dormouse and the Doctor."

Fina wanted me to write a story that she could read herself, so I wrote this and she read it to me. Incredible!



I read "The Master Maid" from The Blue Fairy Book. She was not really able to give me a narration of it. (She woke up at 4am this morning, and though she "rested" til 7, she didn't really sleep at all.)

We had a quick lunch. Fina has swollen tonsils, a viral infection, and can only eat mushy and liquid foods. So there have been a lot of smoothies, avocado and bananas around here.

After lunch, we spent all afternoon outside. We went to the park and Fina rode her bike and splashed through some puddles.



A kind mom, (fellow AOer who lives a few towns over from us, a Facebook friend whom we met in person for the first time today,) came over to deliver some books to me. She met us in the park.  We had a wonderful chat.  With her, we saw a white jackrabbit in our park, and listened to and tried to identify some birds. (Also our neighbourhood horses who were out for a walk). Fina made me proud. She was pretty into it (and her normal chatty-with-strangers self). It was a proud AO/CM moment for sure.

We went for a walk to the creek to see what was going on over there. There is still a lot of water in and around the creek. As we walked back through the museum, one of the maple sap gathering men saw us looking into the maple sap buckets and he came and let Fina take a drink from one of the buckets hanging from the maple tree. She was thrilled.

She stayed out and played with a couple of friends until supper time. She is exhausted!

She was very proud to tell all about learning how to read. "In five weeks, I'm going to be reading Narnia. And that big book about composers. And Fairy Realm."

Friday 18 March 2016

March 18, AO year 1, week 14

Yesterday, on March 17, Fina got in three hours of acrylic painting at dad's university. She had a great time, painting on her own. And mom got to sit and read and relax. It was just lovely. I didn't even take a pic of her work, but she worked on three canvasses.

Today, March 18, we read for a few minutes out of our Italian Bible for Kids. We had fallen a bit behind there.

We went on to chapter 6 of our math book, counting and writing numbers from 0-100. She is doing very well with this.

I read chapter 7 of The Burgess Bird Book, about Scrappy the Kingbird and Cresty the Great Crested Flycatcher. It was a cute chapter. We looked up those birds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's website, allaboutbirds.org. The have photos, descriptions and audio and video clips, which are such a great resource. We are fortunate to have access to these types of things on the internet.

I read two fables from Aesop's Fables: "A Raven and a Swan" and "The Two Goats." She narrated each very well.  The story of the goats was especially relevant as we were able to relate it to Fina and her friend struggling over the same piece of sidewalk to chalk on yesterday.

We read chapter 11 of Paddle to the Sea.  We did some map work, working on the 4 points of the compass as well.

Our artist for the term is Jacques-Louis David. We looked at "Belisarius Begging for Alms."


Fina gave such a wonderful verbal narration. She saw so much in just a few minutes and was able to share in such an articulate manner.  (I totally credit our co-op for this!) I wish I would have recorded it. After looking at it for a few minutes, I turned it over and asked her to narrate it to me.  She thought the outside mountain and horizon section looked like a painting of its own (which the website we looked at later confirmed!) and she explained in detail the people in the painting, she thought it looked like a temple, she noticed the soldier's expression and more.  It was so wonderful! We both quite enjoyed it.  She even asked if the lady was the same lady (Rowena) from the story Hengist and Horsa from Our Island Story. I love the connections being made!

Then she recited her Shakespeare passages to me. She is doing such a great job. I forgot to note than on Wednesday we also made our way through a few chapters of How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare. We got to the great reveal that Cesario is actually Viola (in Twelfth Night).  She enjoyed that!

As I prepared lunch, I asked Fina if she wanted to try doing a sketch of our painting, while looking at it.

She worked on it for 30 minutes, and was looking so closely at the detail. Look at the stones of the road! She had to stop for lunch and to go outside to play, but she has left it out on the table in order to continue with this sketch later.  Wonderful!

She has been outside for two hours already with her little friend K. It is a beautiful day, sunny and hovering around 0 degrees celsius. They are riding bikes and scooters, chalking, playing in the snow. A lovely time! It is such a beautiful day!

Monday 14 March 2016

leading up to March 16, AO year 1, week 14

Monday March 14

We read some poetry this morning during breakfast. I read "At the Zoo," "Rice Pudding," "Missing," "The King's Breakfast," "Hoppity" and "At Home" from When We Were Very Young.  Fina just started reciting "The Christening," which we had read but never tried to memorize. So I added it to our memory box and she basically knows it already. (I love this because she chose it and learned it herself, essentially. Other than Shakespeare, where we learn each passage, for poetry, I always ask her if she wants to memorize this one or that one as we are reading them. But with "The Christening," it was so organically done. Just her brain, doing its own thing. Incredible!) We also reviewed our latest Shakespeare passage, which she also has essentially memorized now.

We sang through our folksong a few times, and listened to some Schubert.

We spent a good chunk of the day outside. The snow has melted really quickly and our creek is full to the brim. So is our forest. So is our frog pound.

This is the hill we had sledded on. Look at all that water!

The creek is on the left, of this land mass, the sledding hill backyard is on the right.

This is in the forest.

Yes, plus 14!!! We took off her pants and socks so she could talk through the ice cold puddles!

Our frog pond. Fina and her friend K waded in it to the top of their legs, 
and sat in it and rubbed mud on their pants. (This water was not as cold as the forest puddles.)
Let's face it, it was mostly Fina doing the sitting and the mud rubbing. 
Her friend was a bit appalled, but wanted to join in as best she could. 


Tuesday March 15
We had our outdoor playgroup. The forest was even more flooded than Monday. We tried going in, but the water was up to their knees!



We watched the big chunks of ice float by on the creek. This one had to be at least 15 feet across. And very rectangular. So strange.


Then, we decided to head to the Frog Pond. They had some messy fun.


Fina also got to play outside with her friend K when she got home from school for another few hours.

We are listening to the Just So Stories on audiobook, read by Jim Weiss. Very fun. We are only going to listen to the ones we have already read, so as not to get ahead of ourselves.

I also read some more of The Red Fairy Book to Fina before bed, from our free-reads.


Wednesday March 16

We started the morning off with listening to some Schubert (and Fina did some much anticipated and wanted bead work! With all the outdoor play time, it seems we are having trouble squeezing in beads and Lego!)


And I had a chance to catch up with my scripture verse writing thing. I was happy to have a few minutes to do that.

We sang through our hymn and folksong ("Holy" and "Ice Worms").

We moved on to Math. We did the test for chapter 5. She did it wonderfully. Now we know the plus 0s and the plus 1s.

Baltimore Catechism, we have now done 1-3 and 6. It continues to provide for lively discussion.

For cursive, we looked at the letters y and z. It was a wonderful cursive day. Really wonderful!

Yes, that says "zeldog" which is the nickname of a dog, Zelda, that we know.

I read 1 Samuel 16: 1, 5-13 (David, the shepherd boy). Fina gave a very good narration.

"The Coming of Hengist and Horsa" from Our Island Story. Problematic narration, as usual.  I'm not quite sure what to do about that. I'm not going to stress about it. I have read that they will get it the second time through. But this book is our history spine. I hate to leave it half baked, but I will!

We spent some time with our memorization box.  We came to the big reveal that Cesario is actually Viola and Fina thought that was quite funny.

We caught up on some catechism.We did Chapter 20 about Lent and Holy Week. We also did the Lent section starting at page 161. Then we did the chapter on Christmas, chapter 15.

Now to do some sewing. And lunch at some point. And a few errands to run this afternoon.

Thanks for joining us!



March 13, AO year 1, week 14

On Saturday, it was so warm and sunny (plus 11, I think) and Fina played outside for over 4 hours. She also rode her bike for the first time this year. What a wonderful day! We had to leave early for the city.

Since we went to church last night, this morning we did some school work, since tomorrow is supposed to be hot as well and sunny.

We did chapter 5 of math, adding 1. We did 5A and 5F as well as all the word problems of 5B-E. We will do the test next time.

We did some cursive work. We learned the letter p.


Some days, her cursive is just lovely, and the experience is hassle free. Today was one of those days. (Other days, our cursive time is fraught with angst!)

I read "The Black Douglas" from Fifty Famous Stories Retold and Fina narrated it very well.

We worked through our memorization box. I read a new poem, "Jonathan Jo" from When We Were Very Young.  Fina finished memorizing our first passage from Twelfth Night. She does a great job with it.

It is drizzly and cold this afternoon, but Fina and I went for a walk, (well, she rode her bike while I walked, we bumped into our friend T riding his bike, wandered with him for a bit and came back home. Fina stayed outside and played for another while. She also rode her scooter for the first time this year. Then she played with playdough for a long time. And dad read three chapters of Prince Caspian to her in the evening. (I think it is either their third or fourth time through the Narnia series.)

A good Sunday.

Saturday 12 March 2016

My 100th post!!! Leading up to March 11 2016

Well, this is my hundredth post. If I may say so myself, I'm pretty impressed I have kept up this habit. I think now I should be able to continue without giving up.  I do hope you have found enjoyment and possibly some inspiration in following along with our homeschool lives.  Thanks for reading and sharing with us!


Monday March 7 - After we did our school work, we went out for a 4 hour walk on the creek with dad (who has his reading week break this week). We made it back to "Peaseblossom Mountain." Fina was so happy.

She also made a slingshot with an old piece of bungee (the outdoor playgroup kids have been playing with that piece all winter!) She worked on it for a long while and was able to shoot a piece of bark.



Tuesday March 8, we had our regular outdoor playgroup. We went walking on the (no longer skiable because it is too slushy and mushy) ski trail. We walked about half of it, I'd think. It is VERY hilly. We didn't really want to walk on the creek because it is melting quickly. And the forecast is for double digits on the weekend (celsius!) so I think that may be it for creek walking until next year. Next come the fun-in-the-mud shots!

The kids had a great time on this fallen down tree, from the creek bed down to the creek. 
It is a large tree.


Wednesday March 9. Fina traced a print of a painting dad commissioned and then she painted it with water colours.


We had a nice day in the city. Fina wanted Anna braids (you know, from Frozen)!



Thursday March 10 - Our co-op meeting #4

The kids were more participatory in singing O Canada and reciting the Lord's Prayer (I thought. Fina was, and she usually doesn't like singing out loud.)

We started reading "The Tempest" in Edith Nesbit's Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare.  Thanks to my daughter, one other mom and I got a turn to narrate. Yikes. (I feel like I do better when I'm reading it myself. Though, strike that. I have read things aloud to her and have absolutely no recollection!!!) The kids gave lovely narrations. (The moms struggled a bit. I certainly struggled a lot!)

We looked at Rembrandt's "Doubting Thomas" painting. It was great. (Though the focused looking only lasted 2 minutes, and there was NO silence at all!)

Rembrandt, Doubting Thomas
We skipped handicraft this time and went straight to nature study. The life cycle of a Black Turtle Bean. It was fun.



Fina's dry brush of a bean (in a pot), a sprouted bean and the bean plant.

And the moms had the loveliest moment of refreshment and sharing while the kids ran around. It was great.  And at some point, one mom had the kids do jumping jacks. Quite the adventure.

We did get in a bit of outdoor playtime as well.  Overall, we had such a wonderfully blessed day!

Friday March 11 - We made it back to Narnia, with our friend SF. Fina and he had such a lovely day together: exploring, playing, pretending, eating, wandering about. It was marvellous! We played outside for 5.5 hours. It was glorious! (I got to sit, basking in the sun and fresh air, catching up on some podcast listening.)


They even have swords and shields! 

Then we crossed back over the river (with the worry that the ice was getting less and less stable with the forecasted 11 degrees celsius in the afternoon) and went to the stick fort.


If you look closely, the long horizontal branches are covered in tree bark pieces that SF helped Fina pick, plus the moss on the stump. They worked long and hard on that. Fina came home with a shopping bag full of treasures.

This was the river, far away from where we crossed, in a sunny and high current spot. But still!




Monday 7 March 2016

March 7, AO year 1 week 14

We had a lovely weekend. The weather has been phenomenal.

It was so slushy and warm that the snowshoes were a challenge.



Climbing trees with our little friend J.

I have never heard such a squeal of delight, all because she finally saw mud!

Some cursive recap on a Sunday. Please ignore the top letters, they have been wrecked up and retraced.

Today we began week 14.  We read question 6 of The Baltimore Catechism.

We did some more cursive. We learned the letter v.  Girls, we can write your names! (Thanks to Tania for reminding us.)



Math: We did 4F and Test 4. She has the plus 0 math facts down with no problems.

I read "Dappelgrim" from The Red Fairy Book, our current free read.

I read "The Elephant's Child" from Kipling's Just So Stories, and Fina narrated it well. It is a cute store.

We worked through our memorization box and learned the 10th line from our current Twelfth Night passage.  We also read a new poem, "Disobedience," from When We Were Very Young.

That is is for us today. We are going to spend the rest of the day outside.

Friday 4 March 2016

March 4, AO year 1, week 13

On Thursday, we went to dad's school and after lunch a group of 6 moms and 11 kids went to the magical land of Narnia. The kids were with us for about an hour and a half and then Fina and I stayed for another hour or so. It was sunny, not windy and just beautiful!



Mr Beaver's Lodge


On Friday March 4, we started with Math. We watched the video for lesson 4, commutative properties (the things I'm learning), adding 0 to anything. I set the timer for 20 minutes and she was able to complete 4A, B, the word problems for C and all of 4D. We also did the extra page for the lesson, 4X. And we highlighted the math facts we now know on the page of 100 commutative properties for addition up to 9. See how quickly you know stuff? And the half above the diagonal line is the same as everything below it.



One of the questions asked you to make a silly word problem for 6+0=6. Fina could not do it! Too convoluted. It was so funny! She tried and tried but she kept adding too much stuff or trying to subtract, or a number of eggs and this many hatched and dinos and mom dinos and dad dinos. It was a disaster! But kind of fun for me to watch the whole thing just fall apart. We will keep trying with that. (It just shows the difference between decoding and encoding.  She is able to convert word problems into an equation, most of the time. But going the other way? No way!!!)

We read these two from Aesop's Fables: "The Ants and the Grasshopper" and "The Ass Carrying the Image." She narrated them well

We read sections of the book of Ruth. She narrated them satisfactorily. Exposure, right?

We sang a few hymns, as well as "Behold the Lamb of God," which is scheduled at church for this weekend. We have a kind friend who is in the choir and she emails me the list every week after practice. We are so blessed to have friends.

We read the first half of "St Bridget" from Our Island Satins. She narrated it.  The legends surrounding her are kind of neat. I did not know that her friends called dandelions "the little flame of God." They are somehow her flower. Very neat.

Let me quote this lovely passage from that chapter:
She is such a homelike saint this Bridget of the fair green island, and she dwells so close to the heart of the people, that it is their common everyday life which holds the most loving memory of her helpful kindness.  In the first days of early spring her little flame-spiked flowers speak to them from the roadside, and bring her message of joy and hope, teelling of the return of life, the swelling of green buds, the magic of the spring. We call her flower the common dandelion, but to S. Bridget's friends it is 'the little flame of God' or 'the flower of S. Bride.' She herself has many names. Bridge or Bridget, 'Christ's Foster-Mother,' S. Bridget of the Mantle, the Pearl of Ireland.

We went on to do some more cursive. That "br" of the word brat. We did lots of work with it and I think she is getting it. Though it is hard!!! (Even I am learning how to make a b and an r together. Mine were not good.  And I know, brat isn't a good word to practice a million times but it works for us!)




We worked from our memorization box. Fina recited one item from each section, plus reviewed our newer ones. She also learned two more lines from Twelfth Night. (She now has 9 lines of that passage memorized.)  She likes it. She really does. When anyone asks her what her favourite part of school is, she always answers poetry. Which I am tickled about. I have no affinity for poetry.

We also read D'Aulaire's Trolls. We liked it a lot. It is beyond our free-read list.

We did school for about 2.5 hours today, and it went well. A little long, but good. No weeping or gnashing of teeth, which is great!

We had a quick lunch and Fina put the finishing touches on her birthday party for Rarity. She has been counting down to this for weeks.


Fina dressed in purple. When you haven't a purple wig, use a hand towel!