leading up to July 19

I meant to say that on July 7, I sent in our notification of intent to homeschool form to our provincial governmental homeschooling office. 7 minutes later I received a response, which was simply "Thank you."  That was easy! Exciting times!!! (On July 17, I received my official welcome email. Our number is in the mail!)

Fina took part in our local town festival. She rode her bike in the parade. She jumped a frog, "Hoppy," who hopped 4 feet in 3 hops. She spent a lot of time outside, running around with her friends. Great fun!

She even held Hoppy the whole time leading up to her jump. She did a great job!

She also "labelled" this frog, all herself. We need to do some classification work, I think. You'd think I would have taken this opportunity to do a little study on frogs, with proper labelling etc. I did not. And do you know what? I am ok with that!!!  😉

These last few weeks, Fina has done a lot of reading. We signed out a bunch of easy readers from the library, plus some other things we had here at home. She is absolutely loving it! Though she will admit after a bit that it is hard work and that she should stop. Which is great! I don't want her to be overtired. It is hard work for the brain to do for sure. But so rewarding.

We read Chapter 13 of Paddle-to-the-Sea, and chapters 14, 16 and 17 of our catechism program.

We have been reading Among the Meadow People by Clara Dillingham Pierson. In CM circles, this type of work is considered nature lore. Stories about characters that help with nature study. Fina is quite enjoying the sweet stories of these little critters. Our good friend L loaned us this book. We have the others in the series as ebooks.

She has done a lot of free play with blocks, this Ikea wooden board game, Camelot etc.

What I like about this two-player game is that there are no dice or anything, you just go!

We have also been spending a lot of time outside. For some strange reason, though southern MB has had A LOT of rain lately, the mosquitoes seemed to have disappeared. They come out only at dusk or in heavily treed areas. But out on the lawn, on the sidewalk, in the open, we are fine. Incredible! I am so thankful!!!

Fina flying a kite

On July 16, we read Lamb's retelling of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Many people say they prefer Lamb to Nesbitt, but for this play at least, I preferred Nesbitt.  Such a wide feast of opportunities. It is a good problem to have for sure! At any rate, we read it in preparation for the next day's fun thing!

On July 17, we got to see this performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream as part of the Winnipeg Fringe Festival. The Knavish Hedgehogs performers are a group of Winnipeg young people, many of whom were homeschooled. They are awesome! It was an incredible performance. I just loved watching Fina's face light up each time they hit a passage we knew. Such joy! And she laughed and laughed and laughed in all the right places. For this alone, homeschooling is worth it. Who would have thought that we could share this with a 7 year old?  Just incredible!

Here she is, just before the start of the performance.

We finished up reading A.A. Milne's book of poetry When We Were Very Young and we started his Now We Are Six.

Today is our outdoor playgroup. It is going to be ridiculously hot out there. I guess this is what is keeping the mosquitoes under control. If you live anywhere near us, be sure to drink lots of liquids and look for shade!

In Celsius, of course!

Thanks for reading!