Monday 24 April 2017

Easter time!

Hello dear blog followers. It has been a while!

The last few weeks have been busy for us, in a wonderfully marvellous way.

Here are some pics from the Easter Triduum at our parish.

On Holy Thursday, we presented these oils to the parish (that we had received at the Cathedral on Monday)


Good Friday


At the Easter Vigil on Saturday it was pouring rain and we couldn't go outside for the blessing of the fire. So they FaceTimed it in to the projector in the church. We watched while a handful of people were outside with our pastor.


We had two adult baptisms which were incredible. One is the mom of Fina's little friend E and it was just a blessing to be a part of that!

We had a nice Easter Sunday lunch with our MB family/friends!

I'm glad we took time "off" from school to focus on celebrating the Triduum and Easter.

We have been doing lots of free reads, drawing, playing, outside play, piano practice, Bible readings and devotions over the last few weeks.

Easter Sunday. It all melted a few hours later!

Fina drew these instructions for nonna (so that she can keep her fish alive while nonno is visiting us!)

Nature study at the creek with her NEW watercolour set.

Fina and her friends made this island in the sand. They collected all that grass and stuck it on!

We started preparing for Fina's first eucharist. We are missing the first class, so we covered chapters 1 and 2 at home.

On Friday April 21 it was plus 17 celsius, sunny, not at all windy. The kids played in and around the creek, as if it were summer.




And this is Saturday April 22, 0 degrees, feels like -4 celsius. Fina was quite pleased and went outside to play for a bit!



She made a BB8 snowman - she had to use all of the snow in our courtyard, basically!

Welcome to Manitoba, everyone!

We spent the entire weekend at dad's university for their convocation events. Though Fina and I are both sick, we managed pretty well.  How do you like this fancy hat Fina tried on at the grad banquet?


And check out this weather warning (Monday April 24)!!!


So, Fina spent a few hours playing outside in the uncommonly sticky snow!





We are going on a further bit of a hiatus. Fina is having her tonsils and adenoids out on May 4th. This week, my dad, sister and baby niece are coming to visit (to provide distraction during the recovery time!), Fina's homeschooling dad is going away for a conference and a visit with our families. Before we know it, it will be the middle of May!

So stay tuned for some of our adventures in the next little while, and, please say a little prayer for Fina (and for me)!






Wednesday 12 April 2017

leading up to Wed April 12

On Monday night, we went to the cathedral to represent our parish at the Chrism mass (the blessing of the oils that are used in the church all year).  It was wonderful! We got to sit right up front and got to see everything that was going on.  We we will be presenting the oils to our parish community at the Holy Thursday liturgy.


We had our outdoor playgroup on Tuesday. The maple trees are no longer tapped, but since it was warm, the trees were dripping. The kids rigged this up to catch the maple water. Yummy!



On Wednesday, we spent the morning doing some free reads. We are reading Caleb's Story, continuing on with The Wizard of Oz and we started Gillian Cross' The Odyssey. Then, we went out for the afternoon to do some nature study. We saw this little guy slither past us. The garter snake wandered about for a good 5 minutes before slithering into the creek. We saw him swim away, with his little head up out of the water. It was quite something!


We painted and sat and wandered for a few hours at the creek bank.




And then Fina played outside all evening with her little neighbourhood friends.

We are really looking forward to celebrating the Triduum this year. We have two adults being baptised in our church at the Easter Vigil (one is Fina's little friend's mom) and it is very exciting!

Monday 10 April 2017

Year 1, week 34, day 2, April 10

Fina started her morning with some yoga. (She needs the movement. She did not go out to play at all yesterday and, obviously, she feels it!)

I read Genesis 5, Adam's descendants to Noah.
Fina did 18C and D of her math, continuing to work on subtraction.
We reviewed her recitations.
I read "The Lion's Share" and "The North Wind and the Sun" from Aesop's Fables for narration.
We reviewed our nursery rhymes in Pio Peep and then I read through Oso Pardo (Brown Bear).  Fina repeated some of the words after me. We will go through it, one page at a time over the next few weeks.

Fina worked on her cursive. The slate seems to be working well.


We read our next poem, #189 "Robin Redbreast."
Fina read Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? aloud to me.


We sang our hymn and folksong.
And Fina worked on her dry brush painting.


Her butterfly net, with some very detailed tiny butterflies. The blue blob is a piece of the sky.

While she painted, we listened to a few chapters of The King of the Golden City on Librivox.

She went out to play and chase butterflies after lunch for a bit.

We've got a busy week at church this week, it being Holy Week and all! But we are looking forward to the wonderful celebrations!

Saturday 8 April 2017

Cabane a sucre in our town!

We took an easy (read not at all) school day on Friday, spending a lot of time doing some free reads. We read William Steig's Sylvester and the Magic Pebble and The Amazing Bone. We also started reading the third book in the Sarah, Plain and Tall series by Patricia MacLachlan called Caleb's Story.  And we continued with The Wizard of Oz.

Fina also spent a lot of time drawing and playing. And she spent many hours outside, enjoying the sunshine and fresh air. Wearing shorts and a t-shirt. She stayed out playing with our little neighbour friend until 9pm. They LOVE being outside in the stillness and dark. (Fina did put on a fleece sweater and pants once the sun went down!)

On Saturday, we had our town's Maple Syrup Festival and we spent the day enjoying maple syrup products, exploring the museum, witnessing historical re-enactments, visiting an old fashioned house and eating baked goods coming right out of the wood stove, going on a horse drawn wagon ride, churning some butter, watching a lady carding and spinning alpaca wool, listening to Manitoban story tellers, playing with our friends and having lots and lots of tire sur la neige. We live in a wonderful town! We had a great time today!




Thursday 6 April 2017

Year 1, week 34, day 1, April 6

We had a great Manitoba Charlotte Mason Enrichment evening last night. We were 11 moms. We did a discussion on narration and then we spent some time doing a dry-brush of a pussywillow branch. It was really wonderful!

We're continuing to read The Wizard of Oz as our free read. Fina is enjoying it. So far, I find that the movie is surprisingly faithful to the book, which is neat. (Fina has not seen the movie.)

I read Matthew 5:13-16. Fina worked on her recitations. We finished reading Benajmin Franklin by the D'Aulaires and Fina narrated throughout.

We finished Peppa se va a dormir in Spanish.
We read "A Fisherman Robbed" in The Burgess Bird Book. We read about the Osprey and the Bald Eagle.  We watched this very cool video of an Osprey swooping down on fish.

I read poem #179, "The Mouse and the Cake" by Eliza Cook in The Oxford Book of Children's Verse.

We did chapter 19 of catechism and read the section about Holy Week as well.

We sang our hymn and folksong.
Fina read aloud from Benjamin Bunny.
We re-read Me on the Map.

And we spent many hours outside at the 6th birthday party of our little friend J. It was a great day!

We've skipped a few days of piano practice. We have had a few late nights and Fina has been sleeping in and I've been wanting to finish by lunch. We will get things back on track!

Wednesday 5 April 2017

Year 1, week 33, day 4, April 5

This pic is from Monday. All of our snow is GONE and just look at that sky!


On Tuesday, we had a great outdoor playgroup yesterday.  We found this little guy.


And the kids enjoyed swimming in the chilly water that had pooled on our friend's yard from the flood of the creek. The floodwaters are receding, so that is great.


Today, Fina spent a long while doing a bunch of free "how to draws" from artforkidshub.com.

We started with our Bible reading, Genesis 4:17-26.
We ran through her current recitations, including "The Owl and the Pussy-cat."
I read "The Butterfly that Stamped" from Just So Stories, stopping a few times for Fina to narrate.
We worked on some new Spanish vocab, "el dormitorio/bedroom" from page 10.  We finished Peppa se va a dormir.

I read our next poem, "The Story of Augustus who would Not have any soup," poem #176 from The Oxford Book of Children's Verse.

Fina read aloud from Benjamin Bunny.
We made a model of Fina's room out of wooden blocks and hid things on the model and in the room for each other to try and find. It was fun! (Yes, tiny Twilight Sparkle was on our model and stuffed Twilight was hiding in the room. It was serendipitous!)


She spent some time working on her wood carving. We are currently reading Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz as our free read. I read a few chapters today. They are very short chapters.

We went out to play for a while in the afternoon.
We have our second Manitoba Charlotte Mason event tonight. We will be looking at narration and doing a nature study / dry-brush painting with a nice group of moms. I'm really looking forward to it!

Monday 3 April 2017

Year 1, week 33, day 3, April 3

I read some Skylark while Fina ate her breakfast. Then she practiced her piano.

I read Matthew 5:1-12, the Beatitudes.
Fina worked on some cursive. I bought this 11x15" magnetic chalk board for $4 at Dollarama. It has two (useless for our purpose) easel legs and can be wall mounted.


This is for you, Elena.


So she did her cursive on her chalk board. It seemed to go better.

She did 18B of her math, subtraction.

We worked on her recitation. We tried reciting our most recent hymn, spoken not sung (as per Charlotte Mason's suggestions). It was an interesting experience.
We also started working on reciting "The Owl and the Pussy-cat" by Edward Lear.

I read "The Sea Fight" from Viking Tales.

We worked on our Spanish. We reviewed everything in Pio Peep, we reviewed all our vocab pages and we reviewed all of Peppa se va a dormir plus our new pages, 19-20.

We finished "A Maker of Thunder and a Friend in Black" from The Burgess Bird Book.  We looked up the grackle. Such beautiful colours.

I read "Mr and Mrs Spikky Sparrow" by Edward Lear, another nonsense poem in The Oxford Book of Children's Verse. It was funny.

We sang our hymn and folksong.

Fina read a few pages from Benjamin Bunny aloud.

We looked at our next painting by Hans Holbein, "The Oberried Altarpiece."



We looked at the two middle portions. On our print, they were the other way around, however. And Fina wondered why the Three Wise Men came to the left of the Nativity portion. It was a great picture study!

The weather is BEAUTIFUL here, so we spent the afternoon outside!