Tuesday 31 January 2017

AO year 1, week 25, January 31

Well, Fina got a much better sleep last night after having played outside for 3 hours in the evening, so I'm hoping today goes better!

We started by reading from Luke 2:41-52. Fina gave a very good narration about the boy Jesus at the Temple.

She learned two new cursive letters, P and Q.

Please excuse the blurry photo! Aren't those nice Qs?

She reviewed her recitations. We went a few lines farther into "My Father had a daughter loved a man" from Twelfth Night.

We read William Blake's "The Lamb" from The Oxford Book of Children's Verse.

I finished reading "King Alfred Learns to Read" and she gave a great narration. What a difference from yesterday!

We started a new folksong today, "Farewell to Nova Scotia." I remember this from when I was young.

We read "The Alphabet" from Just So Stories. Such a cute story. Fina narrated it well.

I read "The Fox and the Goat" from Aesop's Fables and Fina narrated.  I read somewhere on FaceBook that it isn't necessary to give the moral at the end, so I left it off. And I asked her what she thought the moral would be. "Don't help people." (It was "look before you leap.")  Ha!

She read aloud an entire chapter from Frog and Toad All Year, "Christmas Eve." It was wonderful! She was very proud of herself.



We spent all afternoon at our outdoor playgroup. It was pretty cold, but the kids had fun!


Monday 30 January 2017

AO year 1, week 25, January 30

Here we are, with a VERY gentle [read 'slightly disastrous] start to term three.

We read from some free reads for a long while in the morning. (I need to stop doing this. We always end up with a difficult school day after doing this. It is as though she gets too emotionally overwrought (I mean, we were reading The Littles and their Amazing New Friend, not some dramatic epic tale or anything) and just can not make it through her day!

We read the Gospel reading for Sunday, Matthew 5:13-16, and Fina narrated it.

I read our last story from Fifty Famous Stories, "The kingdoms" and Fina gave a good narration of it.

I tried reading two sections of "King Alfred Learns to Read" from Our Island Story. She was completely unable to narrate either passage. And then she pitched a little fit. So I put the book away and gave her the feeling that she had missed out on something wonderful by allowing her mind to wander. We'll see how that works!

She did 13 C and D from her math book. She did it.

We then did some nature study. Fina painted her Betta fish and his bowl. I tried to paint a nuthatch.




Today was definitely not a stellar day. There was a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth (hers and mine!)  Thankfully we made it through!

Fina went outside to play for a few hours during the evening with her little friend K, which I was thrilled about! So all was not lost!

There you go, homeschooling moms. Regular days are just regular days!

Sunday 29 January 2017

leading up to January 29

All they say is true: enlist help and things go more smoothly!  Simple things, like Fina's homeschooling dad has been a proper vacuuming of the house on Saturday mornings. It is routine for him now. And I ask for help with laundry and dishes. And Fina is taking a more active role with certain things. Washing sinks and cleaning mirrors (yes, you have to take the time to teach them how to do it properly first, but then it starts to work!), making her bed, laying out her wool clothes to air out when she takes them off when we come in. Even the simplest of things (we live in a two story house and when things need to go upstairs or down, I just leave them on the bottom or top of the stairs. When she walks by, she will transport the objects to the top or bottom. She doesn't need to put the things away, just leave them at the other end for me to sort out the next time I pass by.)  You wouldn't believe what a difference these little jobs make in my day to day!

All this to say that since I have taken on a fairly long list of "new" things to my life routine, I have needed more help. Are you interested in seeing the list of things I've added to my life, all wonderful, soul nourishing, exciting things? This is mother-culture like I have never had before!

**********
After supper, Fina's homeschooling dad reads to us our Bible readings of the day. Then he reads to us a few pages from his fancy Bibliotheca bible (we are currently in Leviticus) and we draw names to narrate. Then he reads a bunch of pages from Story of A Soul - The Autobiography of St Thérèse of Lisieux.  (Fina is loving this. The first half of the book is her recounting stories from her childhood and youth and is really quite accessible!)  This takes us probably half an hour. At times, Fina and I will work on our handicrafts while he is reading (like a scene out of life from 100 years ago!) and sometimes we will just sit and listen.

Before going to sleep, I am reading The Seven Storey Mountain, an autobiography by Thomas Merton. It reads like a novel, (in that it is easy to read). I am really enjoying it.

In the morning (you may remember that my body is waking me up really early), I reread the Bible readings of yesterday and look the passages up in Logos, and I read any of Charlotte Mason's poetry that may be attached to those verses.

I read portion for the day in The Cloud of Witness.
I am re-reading the Thérèse of Lisieux stuff (I am probably 50 pages behind) in order to re-hear it and add things to my common place book.
I am reading through Charlotte Mason's volume II, Parents and Children, for my monthly online video book club.
Once a week or so, I read a few pages from The Great Recognition, edited by Nicole Handfield. (It must be sold out right now, I can't find it on the Riverbend Press website. I'm nearly sure they will have another print run!),
I'm also slowly reading Anne White's Minds More Awake.

I try to add entries from all of this to my commonplace book as I go.

And, I'm on a few online long term projects.

With my two friends E and L, we started a Manitoba Charlotte Mason Facebook Group. And, as a sub-group (kind of) of this, we have started a Podcast/Book Discussion FB group as well.  I'm managing that group, and listening to the podcast episodes and trying to encourage some discussion there.  We are listening to A Delectable Education podcasts right now, one a week.

And I'm doing some work regarding Charlotte Mason's Saviour of the World volumes of her poetry with Art M.  I helped him create a Charlotte Mason Poetry Readers FB discussion group and am trying to comment there regularly and interact with others.

And I'm working in the Logos app to update all the CM poems that Art and his friends put in there, attached to bible verses. I'm going through all six volumes of her poetry and adding the poem references to the app (and I'm making corrections as I go).  I'm actually making all the corrections to her poetry right now, in the Logos app and in the word documents that have become pdfs on his website.

And I'm working with L, Art's friend, on transcribing CM manuscripts (yes, written in her hand) from digital copies they have. We are working our way through her seventh volume of Saviour of the World that was never published.

This, plus the every day schooling and life things.

It is glorious. It is marvellous. I love it. (At first, I was a bit overwhelmed and exhausted, but I am in the swing of things now!)

**********

Fina continues to enjoy her skiing! She went skating yesterday at our town's outdoor rink. She has really impressive skills, considering she is self taught and I can't skate for beans!


We are looking forward to the forecasted snowfall in the next day or so. The ski trails are very hard and wrecked up! But she loves it, just the same!

We just re-read our way through these four Margaret Atwood books for kids. I can't recommend them enough. They are so cute, full on alliteration, a tongue twister to read, but so fun!





And we continue to read from Andrew Lang's Orange Fairy Book.  Fina's homeschooling dad is reading through some Paddington Bear novels with her as well.
We have been enjoying watching the birds at our window bird feeder. Fina has been continuing to learn how to cook (we made blueberry pancakes yesterday), reading aloud, doing some origami, working on her fingerknitting handicraft, her wood working, playing lots of Monopoly and more!

Wednesday 25 January 2017

Year 1, term 2 exams part 2, January 25

We had a great time at outdoor playgroup yesterday. We were a very small group and Fina was able to ski for a bit with her friends. They also played in the mushy thaw of the frozen creek.


Look at this picture she drew from a YouTube video at artforkidshub. Subject matter aside (she loves MLP!), isn't it lovely?




19 Test for lesson 12 of Math
She did wonderfully. She knows her plus 9, plus 8 and all the doubles very well.


21 parable
She recited the Parable of the Mustard Seed.



17 Who was our painter this term? Describe as well as you can your favourite 
picture from this term's picture study.  Or you can sketch it.

Jacques-Louis David. The painting was “The Coronation of Napoleon and his wife, Josephine.” Josephine was wearing that royal robe, with the special lines on it that Queen’s. And he painted himself into the picture (Jacques-Louis David). There’s kids holding up her dress, pretty girls.  [Mom had to pull her along a bit] A guy on the right, it’s hard to describe. There was a big theatre of these people there. A priest and a Bishop and Pope and, oh please, who knows what else. There were very many holy people. And a guy carrying a cross. Napoleon was going to crown himself, but he didn’t. And then Josephine was kneeling down. The Pope doesn’t seem very happy because he’s crowning his wife.

10 Tell about Laura Secord (Canadian biography)


Laura Secord saved Canada by going to someone’s house (what was his name, someone important, special) the General. She came in and told him. Because when all the soldiers from the other side had came to their house, she had heard, from outside, what they were saying. That they were going to do that so. They decided that they were going to. Because her husband was too weak to go, she said she’d go to the aunt whatever’s house, to see if the could go, but no, they couldn’t. So the daughter went with her. And then they went, but the daughter got too tired. And then she meets these Indians at the house, and she’s scared. She goes inside and tells them. 


5 Tell a fable.

“Dogs and Hides”
There’s a dog and they were looking down from the river and they saw hides, that the guy, the shoemaker, who put out the cow hides and put them in the deep end because he knew no one could get them there. And then, they thought “wow, we should eat these hides and make a fine meal out of them.” So, they decided to try, but the water was too deep. So, they decided they were going to drink the water. They got so full that they died. They couldn’t move anymore. And then it spilled all over their mouth.


7 Tell about Inchcape rock.

Sailors kept bumping into the rocks, so that the Abbot. He saw them crashing on to the shore. So he went out on a little boat and put the bell on. And when he did that, then he went back. The bell would ring when there was waves coming. So they would know that the rocks were coming. And then a pirate ship came and then they took away the bell but then they went back. And they went again and then, he bumped into the rock and the shipped cracked. They said “The kind abbot knew about stuff, so he put this rock here on purpose. Now we’re going to die anyways, so.”


6 Tell the story of Grace Darling. - changed to Arthur and the Round Table.

Arthur was there at a big feast. All the poor people went to the very bottom and everyone went at the top, the important people. Then people were fussing over the table, then Merlin said “why don’t you make a big round table, with no ends, so that even the poor people sit at that table.” [tangent. It is useless for mom to try to tease things out. I really shouldn’t anyway. And my efforts are getting her to say it was his knights and ruling the land fairly etc got me nowhere. It serves me right!]

11 Find Lake Michigan on a map. (Fina also wanted to find Italy and Lake Superior)


9 Tell about Picciola or Antonio Canova.

Picciola
There was a guy who is in jail, but he wasn’t supposed to be in jail. It was a mistake. He was mistaken for someone else. He finds a plant. One of the guards saw it and almost stepped on it and “no, don’t do that.” And the guard says “I wasn’t going to step on that little flower.” There was so much rain and storm and he didn’t want it to die. So then he wanted to move the rocks, but he couldn’t, because only the King could do that. The queen let him go, because “if he was caring so much for a little flower, let’s let him go.” Then he went with Picciola every where that he went.



1 Tell one story about David, from the Bible.

I don’t remember anything about David. David was the youngest son and he was supposed to be anointed by God, but then all the stronger ones, so terrible and whatever, but Jesse said, “No, I have one more son. But he must not be the one. He’s the shepherd.” Then God said to whoever was going to anoint him “this is the one. Even though those other guys look very good, but they’re not a good ruler on the inside. He is. He might not be nice on the outside, but he is in the inside. 


14 Tell me what you remember about the woodpeckers from The Burgess Bird 
Book.

This is like pulling teeth. She does not connect with the Burgess Bird Book. Which is so strange!
There was Downy the woodpecker and then the other guy is as fast as him, but doesn’t drum as fast as him. [She proceeded to imitate the drumming of the woodpecker, for like a minute!] They really drum hard and they peck peck peck peck peck peck. Sometimes they eat other birds’ eggs. Were there babies in them? Why? That’s not very nice!

16 Who was our composer this term? Describe one of his compositions.

Schubert. Wasn’t it Franz Schubert? The trout Quintet and Unfinished Symphony. [She hummed the tune of something (I think it was the first movement of the Unfinished Symphony, but I can’t be sure!  We have a lot of work to do with composer study. She doesn’t have the vocabulary to describe anything.)

24 Sing your favorite hymn from this term

She sang “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty”

18 Father or friend should select a passage for student to read aloud.

I had her read a few pages from “Little Tuppens” from the Treadwell Primer.
She did well.

4 Write all the lower case and upper case letters



8 Tell about Gregory and the pretty children.
I forgot this question, somehow.


25 make French toast (on the last day as our treat!)


Monday 23 January 2017

Year 1, term 2 exams part 1, January 23

We read the Gospel for Sunday and prayed for a few moments.

Here we are, sitting on the couch, drinking hot chocolate. What a fun way to do exams!





23 Sing your favorite folksong from this term

Fina sang “She’s Like the Swallow”


15 Tell the story of the Market Square Dog or Blossom Comes Home

The Market Square Dog

The market square dog was in the market and the vet Herriot, sees the market square dog in the market. He was being sold, I think. No, he was begging for food at the market stands and people were giving it to him and then he left. And then, when he went around the corner, the police man was there and he said “there’s this dog, have you seen him?”  And Herriot says “yeah.” That he wanted to catch him. Then, a while after, he said he was arrested for being in the market square and begging for food. And then he goes to a cottage and opens the door and says “I gave him to my daughters because they wanted a dog.” And Herriot said “I thought so.” And then he said “my name is [something funny].” 


22 poem

She decided to recite a poem we hadn’t actually learned “Epitaph on a Dormouse” #74 from The Oxford Book of Children’s Verse. And she did a decent job with it. That just goes to show how much just even reading it 4 or 5 times is enough to nearly memorize  it!


20 Shakespeare - something from Twelfth Night

She wanted to recite something from Term 1, “I know a bank” from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
And then she recited “What is Love?” and “What Country friends is this?” from Twelfth Night.


3 Who was your favourite character from your Free Reads and why? Tell me a little  
bit about the character. (If needed, prompt titles)

“Ian the Soldier’s Son” from The Orange Fairy Book

My favourite character is the Griffin. He’s a black griffin and he knows a black crow. And Ian always gives him ??? every time the griffin helps him with something. And the griffin is my favourite character from the story.
Ian shakes this big chain and then the griffin always helps him with stuff. Actually, at the end, the griffin says to Ian, “Cut off my head” and then he said “well, you’ve been such a good friend to me that I won’t.” “I’ve been cast under a spell. You will free me and I’ll become a man again.” 


12 Tell how you might tell direction by looking at the sky.

The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Winnipeg is north and then what? is that way? St Malo is in the south.

At night time: You can tell by the north star. To find the north star you can find the dipper, because the north star is the dipper’s handle (the little dipper).
From the big dipper you go “shoo” (mom said the pointer stars)
The big dog is big and he is really near to Orion’s belt. First, to find Sirius, his collar, the brightest star that there is in the world, other than the sun, Sirius. That’s his little license on his collar. Then right beside him is Orion. But to find Orion you need to find his belt. And to find his belt you need to find the three wise men, because the three wise men is his belt. And then you can find Sirius. ‘Cause it looks like Orion is beside his dog, and we think that’s his dog. Now, here’s another dog. It’s a tail without a dog. Just two little stars connected to each other. Just two stars a little bit of distance away from each  other.

[I thought this might be a cute one to listen to.]




2 Tell about the wise men from the East.

The wise men were wanting to give Jesus gifts, but first they stopped by King Herod and he said… He secretly learned from the wise men when the exact moment that the star had appeared. Then he said “come right back to me after you go, so I can also go and give him gifts.” But he actually wasn’t. He was going to kill Jesus. The three wise men were warned in a dream that they should go to their own countries by another road.

[I asked her if there was anything else she wanted to add about the wise men actually going to Jesus and she says no. She wanted to tell the more complicated part. “Mom, you know that I know that part about the star and the gifts and all that. But you might not know that I knew this other part of the story!”  So there!]


13 Find one thing in your nature journal from this term and tell me all about it.

[This question was such a hit, she could not stop at one. She just HAD to do five of them. I wasn’t about to stop her.] 

Feather

I found a feather outside near the path at the museum and it’s very beautiful, but it’s gone now. I painted a water colour bit of a it. It’s very nice. It has a little tinge of blue in it. It’s very beautiful. Yes and the colours, there is a very nice bit of blue at the top, a nice white peak at the bottom and then nice grey feathers right below the black part on top. And then a little spot of white in the middle of the grey and then there’s a black  stripe, blue stripe and then at the very top white.


Shaggy Ink Cap Mushroom

I found a mushroom on the same day as the other one and the same place, the museum. It’s very nice. It’s a very nice greyish white like those mushrooms that are not mushrooms that you eat. They are wild mushrooms, but they’re not like wild mushrooms. They look different. They’re more like oval on the top and then a little stubby stem on the bottom. It’s really nice and it has little blackish, brownish, greyish dots along the bottom. You can explain it while you’re texting it. There’s nice long stripes on the bottom of it. And I painted it.

[I asked her to tell me how big it was and she went on a rampage through the house  looking for something similar. It was actually quite funny for me!]


Black-capped chickadee

This is a black-capped chickadee. And it’s really cute and I painted it. It’s at our bird feeder. It looks normal but then. It’s different than a nuthatch. The nuthatch sort of looks similar so we got mixed up. But yeah, this one is the real one. This is the actual black capped chickadee. We were wondering what the nuthatch was but then we realized it was just a nuthatch.  It has a very short beak, not like a nuthatch, but it has very similar colours to the nuthatch. And a very very very little bit of brown yellow outlining the wing. Standing on a branch. It has a black head with a little bit of white in it and a blue outline because that is sort of what it looks like. 


Mussel shell

There’s a very pretty shell and where did we find it again? In the creek. It has very strange green seaweed on it, yes, and there’s nice brown and dark brown on it. Pretty much with a little bit of a black outline-ish thing. But I always make it like that with a black outline anyway. A very thick black outline. It was really thin on the shell, though.

Was it the day my friends were supposed to come? But we found it at the creek. In the shallow water, where we can go actually swimming. I actually tried paddling there once and it was a lot of fun. I also swam on a ball, on a beach ball with my hands around it. It’s a lot of fun. 


Banded Wooly Bear Caterpillar


I found this little caterpillar and I trapped it in one of our watercolouring sets. And we kept it in the little bowl that you use to put water in. Then we put the pallette on top of it so it wouldn’t escape and we could still look at it. It escaped a few times but we caught it again. His name’s Fuzzy because I named him that. Yes, and then he ran away, but then I caught him. Well, first I saw him in the grass and then I caught him with two water colour things… He’s black all over and with a nice, thick brown stripe in the middle. [his body?] It was really really fuzzy. And that’s why I even made it fuzzy on the paper. [where?] Yes, the same place as all the rest. We saw a few. One or two. At the bridge, the same place as the shell.

That is it for today. Fina did some Lego, played inside and outside. She had a good day!


Tomorrow we have our outdoor playgroup, so we will continue our exam on Wednesday. Thanks for joining us.

AO Year 1, Term 2 exams

Dad is being a very good sport with our evening Bible readings. We have a narration cup with our names in it and we chose a name to narrate after our Bible readings. It gives Fina a break from always narrating and it also gives her the experience of listening to someone else's narration and adding to it.

Fina did some impromptu skiing on Friday, which was a very warm, sloppy day with her friend S. They wanted to take a stab at going down this hill. It was A LOT of work getting back up! (He was smart and took off his skis and climbed up a portion. Fina was more stubborn than that! Or course, I had to kind of pull her up the last few metres!)


It was great fun! The forecast is warm and strange and there is no new snow coming. So we will have to take a bit of a break from skiing.

And it is exam week! Here is my exam for year 1 term 2


Bible
1 Tell one story about David.
2 Tell about the wise men from the East.

Free Reads
3 Who was your favourite character from your Free Reads and why? Tell me a little 
bit about the character. (If needed, prompt titles)

Cursive
4 Write all the lower case and upper case letters

Tales
5 Tell a fable.
6 Tell the story of Grace Darling.

History
7 Tell about Inchcape rock.
8 Tell about Gregory and the pretty children.
9 Tell about Picciola or Antonio Canova.
10 Tell about Laura Secord (Canadian biography)

Geography
11 Find Lake Michigan on a map.
12 Tell how you might tell direction by looking at the sky.

Natural History and General Science\
13 Find one thing in your nature journal from this term and tell me all about it.
14 Tell me what you remember about the woodpeckers from The Burgess Bird 
Book.
15 Tell the story of the Market Square Dog or Blossom Comes Home.

Composer Study
16 Who was our composer this term? Describe one of his compositions.

Picture Study
17 Who was our painter this term? Describe as well as you can your favourite 
picture from this term's picture study.  Or you can sketch it.

Reading Skill
18 Father or friend should select a passage for student to read aloud.

Arithmetic
19 Test for lesson 12

Recitation
20 Shakespeare - something from Twelfth Night
21 parable
22 poem

Singing
23 Sing your favourite folksong from this term
24 Sing your favourite hymn from this term

Handicraft
25 make French toast (on the last day as our treat!)

I will transcribe and post her narrations as they come available.







Friday 20 January 2017

AO year 1, week 24, January 19

(I apologize for not having posted this yesterday!)

We listened to some Schubert before starting school this morning.

We sang our hymn.
Worked on some cursive. She learned the letter P.



We took our second look at Jacques-Louis David's "The Coronation of Napoleon and Josephine" and Fina narrated it again and we looked at it together.
Fina did her math page 12E.

We read about woodpeckers in chapter 11 of The Burgess Bird Book and we looked up the different kinds of woodpeckers online and watched video and listened to their calls and their pecking sound.

We sang our folksong.

We talked about finding north by looking at the stars. We looked at Finding the Constellations by H.A. Rey and saw the map of the Big Dipper and its pointer stars pointing towards Polaris (the North Star, which is always north!), which is the tip of the handle of the Little Dipper.  We also looked at Orion and his belt in the south, and Sirius, the Big Dog's name tag, the brightest star in the sky!  We will go out at night to experience all of this in the sky.

Fina read me a few pages from her Berenstain Bears Bible aloud.
We read two more poems from The Oxford Book of Children's Verse.
We reviewed her recitations and Fina learned the sixth line of her current Twelfth Night passage.

In the afternoon, Fina got out skiing with a friend in the forest and on the creek. Such fun!




Tonight we are holding our first Manitoba Charlotte Mason gathering and mini-seminar.  It is very exciting!

(Edited in the morning to say that we had 18 people, plus 2 babies, plus the 3 of us. People came from Winnipeg, the Steinbach area and farther off! Some drove 90 kms to attend. It was such a wonderful time of sharing and learning together and getting to meet real CM people from Manitoba. Who would have known!?)

Wednesday 18 January 2017

AO year 1, week 24, January 18

The temperatures have really warmed up here. Last week we are -40 celsius and today we are going to plus 1. We were out for hours yesterday with our outdoor playgroup in the warmth. It wasn't windy. It was sunny, with beautiful clouds. A marvellous day!

I read the story of St Hugh from Our Island Saints to Fina (that we did not read last week). We enjoyed it.

I read Matthew 3:1-6 and Fina narrated.
She learned the cursive letter O.

Fina read a few pages from the Berenstain Bear's Bible aloud to me.
We sang our folksong.
I read "Gregory and the Pretty Children" from An Island Story. We recognized part of it which we heard during the story of Saint Augustine way back in week 3 in Our Island Saints.  Fina gave a great narration of it.
Fina worked on her recitations. She learned lines 4 an 5 of our current passage from Twelfth Night.  We also continued with the Parable of the Sower.
Fina completed math lessons 12C and D.
We sang through our hymn.
I read two Aesop Fables, "The Fox and the Leopard" and "The Heron." Fina gave good narrations of both stories.
We read the next poem in The Oxford Book of Children's Verse.

It was a beautiful, sunny and warm day (we did get above 0 celsius) without wind, so we spent the afternoon outside.  It was marvellous! Fina got to ski on our ski trail in town (so much fun. We are blessed!) and she also skied in the park and played too.




making her way up the hill!

Unzipped jacket and the whole bit. 
She only had mitts on because she had her hands in the snow.


We were out for about 3 hours and then she continued to play with her public school friends once they came home from school.

And Fina built a little snowman. Here in our dry, very cold temperatures, we don't often get snow that allows for such frivolity, so that was a great thing for her!


Monday 16 January 2017

AO year 1, week 24, January 16

I didn't post Fina's artwork for our church's "Keep Christ in Christmas" event. The kids all bring some art showing something about keeping Christ in Christmas and they have a little pizza party with games to celebrate. The art work is later judged by age category and the winners get a little prize. Well, when Fina was 4.5, this was her entry (she won a $10 gift card to Indigo).



We had written this description: The stars that brought the wise men to Jesus. The cross is to remind us that Jesus loves us (hearts). The music is from the angels. See the little angel at the bottom?

This year, at 7.5 years old, she entered this.



A few notable elements: The hay of the manger (below the manger) spills into the glowing cross.  Those are camels in the top right. Mary is kneeling at the manger and kneeling at the cross. Spot the two doves, representing the Holy Spirit (at each event, I guess.) And the heart of Jesus, bleeding with a crown of thorns, I think? The coloured things around the heart are rays of light with the people that Jesus loves, all different people.  We had gone to a talk at church before Christmas, a faith formation for adults (which Fina sat quietly and coloured through) and the pastor spoke about how without the cross and the resurrection, the birth of Jesus isn't anything special. We sang "Wood of the Cradle, Wood of the Cross" during that evening and we have had many lively discussions about that. Well, this piece of art is the fruit of such thought!

She won her age category again. She will receive her prize on Sunday.



On our way to the city yesterday, Fina spent some time working on her fingerknitting handicraft.

Yesterday, we also got Fina a pair of skis and we went out to ski for half an hour in the dark.

Fina also got a little Betta fish.  She has been wanting to have one to match nonno and nonna.



And yes, the two fish did FaceTime (a long standing dream of Fina's.) You will see our fish, Jim Shore (Jimmy for short) in the upper left hand corner of this screenshot.



This morning, we started with feeding our little fish, Jim Shore aka Jimmy.


And we listened to some Schubert over breakfast.

I read Matthew 2:1-12 and Fina narrated it well.
I read "Market Square Dog" from the James Herriot Treasury. It is a sweet story and Fina narrated it very well.
We reviewed a bunch of Shakespeare passages. Fina knows them all very well. We read aloud together the Parable of the Sower.

We started our next math lesson, lesson 12 (adding doubles) and Fina did lessons 12A and B.  The only two doubles Fina doesn't really know well is 6+6 and 7+7, but she is learning those!

We sang together our folk song.

We read "Grace Darling" from Fifty Famous Stories.  We looked her up on wikipedia and we saw a photo of the monument to her. It is quite a neat story.



Fina reviewed her upper case cursive letters from A-L and we learned M and N.


We sang our hymn together.
I read poem 75 from The Oxford Book of Children's Verse, "Time," by John Huddlestone Wynne.

Fina read "The Three Billy Goats Gruff" from The Treadwell Primer to me. She is doing a wonderful job.

We did chapter 5 from our catechism book, looking at Ordinary Time.

This afternoon we went to the park for Fina to have a good workout with her skis. We were out for two hours, 1 hour and 45 of which she was on her skis! She LOVED it!





Friday 13 January 2017

AO year 1, week 23, January 13

Look at the lovely painting Fina worked on yesterday afternoon.



This morning, we listened to some Schubert over breakfast.

I read a chapter from The Orange Fairy Book to Fina, while cuddled under the nice, warm blankets on the cozy couch. This is one major plus about homeschooling!  I found this book on Librivox and we have listened to a couple of chapters of it that way, but I must say I didn't enjoy it as much. (It could have to do with the reader, or it could just be that I'm not paying as much attention.)  Related to this, I came across this CM quote in the last few weeks and I was reminded of it today.

CM vol II 106
Charlotte Mason in volume II, p 106, is quoting Felix Adler:
"My first counsel is, Tell the story. Do not give it to the child to read. The child, as it listens to the Märchen [the fairy tales], looks up with wide-opened eyes to the face of the person who tells the story, and thrills responsive to the touch of the earlier life of the race, which thus falls upon its own." That is, our author feels, and rightly so, that traditions should be orally delivered. This is well worth noting. 
"Looks up with wide-opened eyes to the face of the person who tells the story." I am not a wonderful story teller, like some parents are, but I can see that this does make a difference!


I read John 1:29-34 and Fina sort of narrated (ha!)
She took her math test for lesson 11 and was able to answering all the questions correctly.
We sang our hymn, "Praise to the Lord, the Almighty" and then Fina wanted to sing it in a round (which doesn't work, in case you are wondering!) So we sang "Row, row, row your boat" in a round. She couldn't quite hold the tune, so (thank you, technology) we recorded ourselves singing it on GarageBand and then played that and sang the round against it. It was quite fun!

We read chapter 18 of Paddle to the Sea. Fina narrated it. We looked at Lake Michigan again on the map and saw Paddles' journey.

I read "The Bear and the Bees" from Aesop's Fables. Fina narrated it well.

We read poem 74 from The Oxford Book of Children's Verse, "An Epitaph for a Dormouse." It was cute. We always reread the last few poems as well.

Fina reviewed her recitations. She learned lines 2 and 3 from our current passage from Twelfth Night. She is quicker at this than she thinks. We also reread aloud the Parable of the Sower.

She worked on her cursive K and L.


We sang our folksong, "She's Like the Swallow." Fina is really participating much more with the singing, which pleases me a great deal.

I read "Waiting" from the AO paraphrase of Parables of Nature. I have a hard time connecting with these stories. But this one was a bit easier to get into than some of the others.

Fina read "Chicken Little" from the Treadwell Primer aloud to me. She is doing such a great job with these!

Fina spent a long time in the afternoon working on her finger knitting and her wood working.  The temperature is extremely low and though we went for a quick walk, she did not want to stay out to play. You know it is REALLY cold when Fina doesn't want to stay out and play for a half an hour at least.

We continue to read the Bible together before or after dinner as well as the autobiography of St Thérèse. We are really enjoying this time together.

After supper, Fina and I painted with some new supplies we received in the mail (another late Christmas gift to ourselves).

This is mine. These birds come to our window bird feeder all the time, 
but I painted it based on the painting in the field guide.

This is Fina's copy of mine

Fina wanted to paint some objects she had brought in the house

This was our first time really painting fauna (we have mainly stuck to flora). I think we did ok!


I would like to read "St Hugh of Lincoln" from Our Island Saints to finish up week 23. I am hoping to squeeze it in over the weekend.

One more week and then we will be doing our second set of exams. Very fun!