knitting and skiing

We finished reading The Courage of Sarah Noble and our moving on to Calico Captive by Elizabeth George Speare as our historical fiction reading. We read the first chapter and it is riveting. I fear it may be a little mature for Fina (as there is a young woman who is being wooed by a man) but she told me she liked it and didn't want to stop!

I purchased three McGuffey readers and we are quickly making our way through them.

Fina is enjoying her knitting.

And continues to enjoy her brush drawing.

You might not be able to see that corn cob, but it is so detailed!

I love how in a CM education, you read slowly and spread out. It can seem counter-intuitive, but there is something wonderful about picking up a book, after having set it aside for one week. We are experiencing this with Rosemary Sutcliffe's The Wanderings of Odysseus. Fina loves it and easily picks back up from where we left off.

We had a lovely jaunt in our forest on Friday afternoon. Fina found a great tree limb to sit in!

One the weekend, Fina finally convinced me to let her go skiing. (I keep discouraging her, telling her it would not be fun to ski on the iced over slush and that she should wait for the next snow.) Well, did she prove me wrong! She had a lovely night-time ski on Saturday in our park and again on Monday night in a wind storm. We are still waiting on that new snow!

We've spent some lovely time watching our window bird feeder over the last few days. On Monday, we actually saw a blue jay come to it many times (though he is so big, almost too big for it), as well as the black capped chickadees and nuthatches who are our regular guests. Wonderful!

Another proof of recitation leads to memorization. We've been working on "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost. We've only spent less than 10 minutes, 4 times (once a week) and today, Fina was able to recite it almost perfectly on Monday!

We finished reading The Cricket in Times Square by George Selden, as one of our free reads. It is a cute story and we both enjoyed it. I think we're going to try Kate DiCamillo's The Tale of Despereaux next.

We started some history things this week. I started our family's history chart (outlining the years from when Fina's homeschooling dad and I met to the present) and Fina started her own life's history chart, from her birth to the present). We spent about 15 minutes filling in some information and it went really well. This leads up to other history tools.

Today, on our way home from outdoor playgroup, we stopped by our town's nativity scene that was just put up this weekend. They don't put Jesus in until Christmas.

Thanks for joining us!