Friday 28 September 2018

Winter is coming! Not yet. Autumn is short in Manitoba!

Well, the temperature just dropped terribly here, and we are hovering just above 0 celsius. Windy, grey. We had 10 minutes of heave snow thing morning. It didn't amount to anything, but still. It isn't easy.

We had to take our nature journalling indoors. We were looking at a pineapple weed in the park, but it was too cold to even write in our journals! So we wrote and painted inside.

Today, Fina did her first written narration. I call it written, though she dictated it to me and I wrote it out longhand. This requires her to slow down and think about her narration. We read the first half of Chapter 97 of Our Island Story. This is the narration she dictated to me.

I read the first paragraph, and she narrated:
They [the British] killed their King and Queen, so then they had a Prime Minister. This guy was very peaceful. And France went against them, and they started fighting by land and sea.
I read on, and she narrated:
Only the British were strong enough against Napoleon, a guy who only cared about himself. He didn't care and gave the crown of the kings to his friends. He didn't care how much the people suffered. Napoleon was from France. 

I read, and she continued:
Napoleon wanted to conquer England. He knew the Irish hate the English too and would be willing to help the French. So he wanted to invade the Irish but the Irish wouldn't let them, so they were forced to leave. Then the people decided to be united instead, and not be at war and be nice to each other. The British soldiers spoiled everything, they spoiled Napoleon's plans and they made peace with France.
I read the last portion of our reading, and she finished her narration:
Every sailor felt his courage rising, because they were on ships and this guy [Nelson] said "I am like a cat watching for the Spaniards like mice and I know I might be filled while I am at it." And he sent a signal from the top of his own ship the Victory, "England expects that every man will have to do his duty."
This is a fine narration, as far as I'm concerned. (So, we'll have to work on the "guy" thing. I should write the names on the white board before we start, so that she has a reference.) She is not proficient enough in her writing, so I thought we'd do it this way to start. Down the road, I will have her write the first few lines herself and then just give an oral narration for the rest of it. I really wanted to give her the chance to hold her narration, and slow it down to the speed of my writing, which is quicker than her writing, of course, as an intermediate step!

I went with some of my friends to the big used book sale in our nearby city and got these gems, among many others. It was a great day!


Abe Lincoln is my first ever Landmark!

Fina is working hard on keeping her cursive writing to be precise and consistent. We are making our way through the alphabet as a review, and we'll move on to word and sentence copywork as soon as we are able.

We are really enjoying our Canadian historical fiction, Jeremy's War 1812. It is so fun to see how it lines up exactly with our Brown's The Story of Canada as well as the British Our Island Story. After reading the OIS passage that we read above, we read Jeremy and they were speaking about General Brock (from our Brown reading from a few days ago) as well as Napoleon. We are really enjoying history this year!

I found a neat biography of Robert Louis Stevenson through our province's educational library and we've been reading it. We pulled out our old copy of his A Child's Garden of Verses and read the poems that are alluded to in stories of his childhood. It is so interesting to see how much his poems were inspired by his actual life. He actually suffered from tuberculosis and spent a lot of time playing in bed, which inspired his poem "The Land of Counterpane." He also actually had a lamp on the street outside his window and the neighbourhood lamp lighter was actually named Leerie. This biography is a great read. She has written a bunch of other biographies that I hope to track down. They are 48 pages, with pictures and quite accessible for form 1 and 2, I think.

During her nature study today she was singing our hymn "Battle Hymn of the Republic" which she claims she doesn't really like. But it certainly is catchy!

It has been a good week. We are enjoying the feast. It isn't always easy, but it is delicious!

Friday 21 September 2018

Back to school!

We started back to school last week!

"How do we make our nature walk and journalling time shorter?" asked nobody ever! We had our first nature walk this week, on Monday (I couldn't get myself organized enough to actually take Fina on a nature ramble last week. She got in hours and hours of outdoor play, but either with her friends or with me, but without any journalling).


We went down to the creek and I asked her to wander a bit to find something that would catch her fancy.  Fina found a tiny clam (she loves clams!) and painstaking painted one half of its shell, from the convex side and from the concave side. And look at what she had me write!


This first photo shows three 3 images - the first is Fina's painting of the outer side of the shell, the second shows the painting of the inside of it. The blue splotch was Fina trying to trace the clam with paint -- the paint ran, she worked furiously to try to contain it, and then to wash the paint out of the paper etc. She was a bit upset as this was her new journal, but she did not get frustrated (which completely surprised me. I expected her to cry!) and decided it would be a lovely colour for a background and traced her shell in pencil. She really wanted to depict the actual size of the shell. I told her that next time she could draw just the outline with a really fine brush (without tracing, but free hand.)



We were out for 2 hours that afternoon. We had a lovely ramble and a detailed observation time, with lots of discussion and enjoyment and gazing at God's splendour, focusing on a tiny clam shell that is only1cm in diameter.

And on Thursday, she did these brush drawings during our nature time, with ample written narrative as well. (It was freezing cold, windy with such a terribly cold northerly wind blowing on us. But Fina would not be deterred. Good thing, because I would not have chosen to stay out there to journal.)




We got a new sloyd book this year and we are really giving it a go!

I'll have to get a pic of Fina cutting her folds with an exact-o knife. She just loves it!




One of our poets for the term is William Wordsworth. We read his "There was a Boy" poem on Thursday.


I didn't really know what this poem was about, but after we read it she told me that she thought the boy was maybe actually the sun, or maybe even God. Because she figured the boy wasn't human. How on earth did she get that? But she did!!! Incredible. She said it was because how he had his hands held, with fingers interwoven, and shouting across the Vale, and being received into the Lake. The sun could do all of that! We had this interesting discussion about this poem.

A little group of us have started a mom's study group to read volume 1 of Charlotte Mason's Home Education series. There were 8 of us at our first meeting. Such a blessing to have an actual, in real life, local group. This is something we've been praying and hoping for for a long time!

I'll leave you with this cuteness: Fina and her little friend built this house at outdoor playgroup this week.


Our summer 2018

Over 5 months between blog posts. Hmm.

We've had a lovely extended summer, with lots of travelling (Florida, a TransAtlantic cruise with stops in the Azores, Lisbon, Càdiz, Malaga, Ibiza and Barcelona, time with family in Ontario, 6 weeks at home and then a quick time back to Ontario for my nonna's funeral.) The highlight of our trip? Seeing the incorrupt remains of St Victoria in a little crypt below sea level in Cádiz and visiting La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.


At the port in Lisbon. Her first time putting her feet in that side of the Atlantic ocean!

We went through the Straight of Gibraltar! 
It was after midnight, so we saw the lights on the Rock. It was super exciting!


Fina's first time in the Mediterranean Sea (well, this is technically the Alboran Sea) in Málaga

Fina with the officers of the Disney Magic ship. She was chosen to be the "official pin trader."

This is the crypt of the Cathedral in Cádiz, with the incorrupt remains of S Victoria (a sort of unknown Roman saint). Read about this crypt here. It is in Spanish, but you can see some well-lit pics. Fina loved it!




And La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. Incredible. We were speechless. If you ever get the chance, go!

We took a tour up the Nativity tower and this was one of our views of Barcelona.
Then we climbed down the spiral staircase in the tower, for 65 metres, back into the church




And, of course, fancy European gelato!




Back home we went to the annual Frog Follies Festival in our town. Here is Fina with Pierre and Jolys!



I'll finish up my "back to school" post asap!