Tuesday 22 January 2019

Christmas break

We've had a Christmas break from formal lessons and spent a lot of time just reading aloud.

Fina's homeschooling dad finished reading The Hobbit with her and they started The Lord of the Rings.
He read Kate Seredy's A Tree for Peter aloud for all of us over a few days at Christmas and it was a very touching story.

Fina and I read a bunch of Christmas-y books.
We absolutely loved Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. I can't believe I've never read it. We both were impressed at the language, the turn of phrase. You can just tell a living book, even reading a few sentences. That book is beautiful, through and through. We ILL'd the version illustrated by P. J. Lynch, upon the recommendations of some CM moms, and it did not disappoint.
We also greatly enjoyed Astrid Lindgren's The Children of the Noisy Village. Such a cute book, with the Christmas chapter in it.
Rumer Godden's The Story of Holly and Ivy is the sweetest book we've read in a long time. It's a new favourite.

We were on a Tomie DePaola kick. We read his Francis: The Poor Man of Assisi which is a beautiful book! The Lady of Guadalupe, The Legend of Old Befana, The Legend of the Pointsettia, and The Story of the Three Wise Kings.

We read a few other more modern books.
We liked Susan Tan's Cilla Lee-Jenkins: Future Author Extraordinare. It is nice to see a biracial girl exploring her identity.
We also read Karina Yan Glaser's The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street. I really wanted to like that book, but I think it ever so slightly deals with things in a little bit more of a mature manner than I had hoped, based on the reviews. I didn't always love how the kids treated each other. And I didn't care for the love interest. But you do feel like the brownstone is a character. It is well-written. Fina really wants to read the sequel. We shall see.

Fina is loving all things E. Nesbit. After having read The Enchanted Castle in the fall. We read her Five Children and It and Fina loved it! As soon as we finished that, we started reading The Phoenix and the Carpet. I did not know that it was a trilogy, the third book being The Story of the Amulet.

She got this cute loom from Ikea and has been making tiny carpets and mats with it.




Plus lots of playing outside, some skating and some skiing.






We have had quite a few days where the snow is buildable this year. More than usual. Which has been fun.




We started back to school last week, but I'm working on a new post for that. Thank you for your patience, kind readers!

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