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!