I'm going to change up my blogging style a bit. I'm not going to post every day (with a detailed schedule). Rather, I'm going to just give you the highlights every few days.
We are enjoying our literature tales' selection for this term, Rosemary Sutcliffe's The Wanderings of Odysseus. Fina loved The Odyssey by Gillian Cross that we borrowed from a friend and read through twice over the last year, so Sutcliffe's (well, Homer's) story is a bit familiar to her.
With our Bible lessons, we have an atlas of the Bible that we are using and Fina is engaging well with the maps. We now know where the Jordan River is (John the Baptist) and where Egypt is (Exodus)!
And Fina really enjoyed her chalk pastel drawing. I'm not sure we're doing it "right." We'll have to work on not letting it smudge while drawing. Once she was done, I sprayed it with a clear fixatif which has coated it nicely. The smudging was all from before the spray.
We had a second great nature study on Wednesday. We are taking the "paint less, write more" approach. I don't know why I never "got" this before! We intently looked at a spruce tree on our Museum grounds and Fina dictated much to me. And she sketched this cone from the ground beneath the tree.
Here she is, sketching at the Museum.
On Thursday, we started Minn of the Mississippi and Fina loved the first chapter. She gave great narrations throughout and enjoyed the story so much. It is written in quite a different style than Paddle to the Sea (which she liked, but did not love.)
We started our sewing lessons. Fina knows how to sew, but I never had her wrap her own bobbin, cut her own thread, thread her own needle or tie her own knot. So we did all of those things.
On Friday, Fina was asking for chalk pastels, but we were doing bry-drush today. A wonderful part of a CM education is that you feel ok saying "we're sticking to the lessons. You will enjoy it more by waiting until next time." And because you've said it often, (like pertaining to reading another chapter in a book) the kid doesn't argue! She did get to do her same daisy drawing lesson in dry-brush and she liked that a lot!
Here's the "side by side" comparison. Aren't they pretty?
And she wanted to have me read aloud a free-read while she did her painting. I was going to chose something from this year's list (we have lots of fun things to chose from) but she wanted to continue with Lang's Olive Fairy Book which we haven't finished. We have a few of Lang's colour books left to read and I suspect she will be asking for those for a while yet. The other books will just have to wait (or be staggered in amongst the Lang's!)
We started reading Howard Pyle's The Wonder Clock and the story captured our attention for sure. Fina gave good narrations throughout.
We started our other nature lore book, Arabella Buckley's Trees and Shrubs. We read about the Oak Tree (and the Oak apple, how slugs lay their eggs inside a rolled up leaf, and galls, and all sorts of interesting things we did not know anything about!)
When we went out for our nature study, low and behold what do we find in a folded up leaf on a raspberry cane? A teeny, tiny caterpillar! She was thrilled. When Fina's homeschooling dad came home, she re-iterated, many times, that what we had just read about in our book we then saw in real life. She was thrilled. So was I! We did our non-dry-brush nature journalling today. Fina sketched a ladybug, a weed leaf with what-we-think-are-posssibly-galls and gave an oral narration of what she saw with the caterpillar (which I wrote down for her in her nature journal)!
And here is Fina jumping off of the swing at our park, on our way home from our nature walk. Yup, swinging in her comfy lounging (aka pj) pants and rubber boots. That is how we roll around here!
No comments:
Post a Comment