October 5, AO year 1, week 4

On Friday night, at the dinner table, Fina started reciting lines 3 and 4 from one of the poems we have read recently "The Cow." Within 5 minutes, she had learned a whole stanza and a bit more.

Over the last year, we have listened to the Little House books on audiobook.  She has quite enjoyed them. And she knows what a slough is. I do not!  (We love Cherry Jones' reading all nine books. We heard them on youtube, but I can't seem to find them to provide a link. I know they can be purchased. Just last week we started listening to Winnie-the-Pooh on audiobook. We discovered audiobooks a few years ago. They make tooth brushing time much easier for mom (because Fina just lays there with her mouth open).

Today turned into a helping others kind of day, not of our planning. The blessing of homeschooling.  Fina was up from 2-4am for some reason. She was uncomfortable, she had to change her pjs, this morning she said that she was awake because her head was spinning (though she didn't say that during the night). At about 8:30, I got a note from our friend across the street asking if we'd walk Fina's little friend K to school, because K's little baby sister C had a stomach thing. Well, Fina slept til 9am, so K had to just wait. Fina got dressed quickly and we walked K to school. We swung by the library to hang a poster for our "outdoor playgroup" that is starting tomorrow. Then we came home, Fina got back into her pj and had her breakfast. We were just about to start our schooling at 10:30, when we got a note from our friendly librarian whose young son was also sick and needed to be picked up from school.

Well, Fina had to get dressed again, and away we walked back to the library. We filled in for the library all day. Fina helped out a lot, stamping the library address in some new books, collecting books for me every time someone left books in the drop box, putting books I had checked in onto the shelving cart.  I had packed some colouring and some Lego for her to do, as well as her school work.

We were able to finish reading the last half of the story of St Augustine of Canterbury. She narrated it well enough (I didn't split the second half at all, I just read it straight through).

We came home for lunch and had a quick chat on Facetime with my dad who told her the story of St Augustine. He reinforced what we had learned and Fina was quite surprised that nonno knew the whole thing.

We went back to the library. She learned her cursive letter x. She was able to work independently while I dealt with patrons at the circulation desk. She also reviewed all her letters on her own (I had written them in upper case print on a scrap piece of paper, and she transcribed each one into cursive.)

She also was able to complete two pages of MUS, 13A and 13B on her own. Yay for independent work.

She played with her Lego, she coloured, and she spent a lot of time finding books to sign out as well as flipping through books. 

It was a real bonus to be able to help people out, while still getting some school work done. A definite bonus for homeschooling.

While at the library (which is attached to the local school) we saw her friend K who came in with her class, and then also her friend M who also came in with her class.  So that was quite nice. And K's mom came to pick Fina up from the library once K was home from school so that the girls could play at the park for a while. It is so nice that the village is raising Fina. It is so nice to have other moms who rely on me and on whom I can rely. Fina got an hour and a half outdoors, which would not have been possible if she was with me inside the library until 5pm.

All in all, it was a great day.  A little light, and not the most exciting for her, being in a building for hours and hours, but it was great!

October 2, AO yr 1, week 3

The joys of homeschooling. We were able to take yesterday off, for a very constructive meeting for mom with a fellow homeschooler. We are looking to start up a Charlotte Mason homeschooler's coop in our town. The basic idea is that we will cover Shakespeare, composer study, picture/artist study, handicrafts, nature study and hymn study as a group. The feast subjects!) You will certainly hear more about it when we get started up.

Yesterday, we also volunteered a couple hours of our time to our good friend Kim at her wonderful local shop The Artist Pivot. It is their 2nd birthday at the store and Fina and I went to pack some goody bags for kids for next week.

Then we still got in some outdoor time on an afternoon that warmed up nicely. Look what Fina was FINALLY able to do!

And, we watched the federal election debate for the MP candidates for our riding of Provencher. Fina knows the 4 parties by their colours. The Green guy works with dad.

And now we are ending our week on a Friday (instead of a Thursday). It all washes out in the end. The idea is to have 36 weeks, of about 4 days each per year. We can school whenever we like, take off weeks or days whenever we like. At any rate, we are right on track, being able to complete our week in 4 schooling days. And realistically, though, our weeks might not always start on a Monday. And I am really fine with that!

Today we are just finishing up some remaining items for week 3.

Fina wrote a bunch of words that can be written with the cursive letters she has learned so far. A good review day (as scheduled in the list I am using. Worked out great for us today!)

MUS 12E and 12F. And a few more pages from the Primer Activities Booklet: 12X through 15X.

And on to poetry.  We reread the last bunch, recited the three she knows (she also gave a lovely recitation of her poems yesterday to our friend, C, at dad's work. And showed him all her cursive letters).  We read "The Sun Travels," "The Lamplighter," "My Bed is a Boat" and "The Moon." I think we will try to learn "The Moon" possibly. It has has a bat that lies in bed at noon, so she likes that!

And now we are going to help out another friend and get in some more lovely outdoor time as well. The weather is holding up very nicely for our part of the world!

Still to do: I want to get more structured foreign language time. It will need to be part of our daily schedule somehow. But I am so pleased that this co-op is going to help me cover the things that I need to work into our regular routine.

September 30, AO yr 1, week 3

We had a great day outside yesterday. We had a birthday party in the park for our friend M who turned 5, and all the kids (9 of them, 8 of them aged 6 and under, one who is 8) had so much fun, running around and playing together. All kinds of unstructured, imaginative play.  The afternoon warmed up more and more. It was all we could do to drag ourselves in for supper.

Today, after our breakfast and morning prayer time, we started with some "beyond free reading." Random twaddle from the library!

We read the first half of the chapter on "St Augustine of Canterbury" in Our Island Saints. We read about Pope Gregory allowing Augustine to go with his gang of 40 monks to England to convert them, after having seen fair-looking boys being sold as slaves in Rome. We have just been introduced to King Ethelbert of Kent (a heathen) and his already Christian wife Queen Bertha (she had brought a priest with her from France and she already had a tiny chapel, St Martin in their kingdom).  Fina narrated it well as we went along the story. We will finish the second half of this story next week.

On to poetry: she re-recited her three poems to me, and we read a few new ones. "The Wind" which I thought was cute and has a repeating two-line couplet at the end of each stanza, but Fina said she didn't want to learn it. We also read "Keepsake Mill," "Good and Bad Children" and "Foreign Children."  They were all too long and I myself didn't care for the content of the second and third ones. We will find something else to memorize.

Cursive: the "t"s are good. She also wrote "at" today. We also reviewed "man" and "sass." She can almost spell the words when I ask her to write them. Almost!

We read Chapter 3 of Paddle to the Sea.  She is excited about it now that the little canoe fell through the melting snow into the brook.  She narrated it well.

MUS Primer 12C and 12D. She is doing well with math. I also had her do a few pages of the Primer Activity Sheets, the entire book is free to download online. I had printed it a while back, but we only did the first 4 pages. They have sheets for Alpha and Beta as well.  Today she was able to do pages 5 through 11. It was a fun way to review the concepts, actually.


That is it for today. Thanks for reading!

September 28, AO yr 1, week 3

We are having a bit of a slower start this morning, after last night's late bedtime to see the lunar eclipse.

Fina continued working on her scarf. We need to finish it up today.

She also made this cute Canada flag with what she believes is a maple leaf that she found yesterday. I told her it isn't a maple leaf, but she cares not!

We did our morning prayer and read the Bible readings for this coming Sunday.

On to cursive. We repeated am, an, man, s, ss, ssss, sass, mass. The cursive is getting much better! So, we tackled t. And tt and tttt.  She did wonderfully with those t's. She was much less frustrated today with her cursive work. Which is great. She writes very smoothly and fluently, which I am happy about.

Let me provide a link to her fountain pen, the Lamy ABC. It really helps her keep a correct pen grip because of its shape. (This is something we are trying to work on with pencil crayons and pencils etc. She gets lazy and falls into a three finger grip often.) Apparently, it is the fountain pen that is commonly used in primary schools in Europe. I don't doubt it. Goodness knows that Europeans, in general, have much better penmanship than we do.

Next, on to poetry (at Fina's request).
Here is her "too cool for school" recitation of her two poems "Raining" and "Singing" that she has been working on the last few weeks.

We reread "My Shadow," "System," "A Good Boy," and "Escape at Bedtime." We read three new poems today: "Marching Song," "The Cow" and a two-liner "Happy Thoughts." She memorized the last one very quickly.

We got the chance to talk about whether we are as happy as kings with all the things we have. She answered an emphatic "no!"

We read Genesis 22:1-19, the story of Abraham and Isaac. She narrated it very well!

She wanted to read something else from the Blue Fairy Book and since "Cinderella, or the little glass slipper" was an optional story to "Beauty and the Beast" for AOyr 1 week 3, I thought I could tack it on as an extra. I had Fina narrate it, and she did so very well. SPOILER ALERT: the story is very nice and different than the Cinderella story as we know it. She goes to two balls and at the second ball she loses her glass slipper.  The prince's men find her, the slipper fits, she puts on the other slipper she had kept and her step-sisters beg her forgiveness. She forgives them, gives them lodgings in the palace and even finds for them two Lords of the court.

Then, we read "The Brave Three Hundred" from Fifty Famous Stories Retold. She could not narrate it at all. I gave her the "I'm very sorry you missed out on paying attention to such a wonderful story" speech and closed it up.

Rookie Mom mistake: do not do three narrations in a row! It is just too much for her. She would have gotten that story just fine. It was short and exciting!

MUS 12A and 12B.  ADDITION!!! 2 + 3 = 5. Very exciting! "Mom, is this like REAL math?"  I must say, I'm really impressed with Math-U-See. The manipulatives really work. She got the whole addition thing quite easily. She knows most of the bars by colour, and the ones she doesn't know she learns by trying. I'm already a believer!

We are in the process, with some friends, to start a monthly CM homeschooling coop. I hope to cover some of my missing items there! Maybe nature study with painting etc.  I will keep you posted as we figure something out. It is so great to have homeschooling friends locally (not just in Facebook groups, which are great, but still!)!

Off to lunch. (Fina is going to work on some Lego right now as I prep lunch.) And to finish that scarf for M. And to continue to read Peter Pan, and to play outside, and get to the Post Office, the library etc etc. What a fun day!

Oh, I had better play some Brahms while I prep lunch and she builds with Lego. I almost forgot today!

Weekend handicrafts and the moon!

We had a very fun weekend!
On Friday afternoon, we went out to play with a bunch of our friends who came and went, and we hit our 1000 hours outside goal.  1000.75 hours spent outside from November 3 2014 to September 25 2015. Under 11 months.  I am so proud of Fina (and of myself too!).

On Saturday, we went with some friends to a nearby beach (at a man-made reservoir) and we found 8 baby turtles, swimming near the shore. They were so cute, with their little tails.

No, Fina did not pick one up. The pic shows her friend T holding one. However, she did touch its shell (so did I). It was hard, just like you would imagine a turtle's shell to be.

Here she is with her friends, playing at the beach.

She also made a pinch bowl (with some help from our friend's mom, L) out of clay she gathered on the beach.

Surprisingly for MB, the weather was quite nice (though very windy) with temperatures in the high 20s and they were able to swim for a bit (though the water was cold, though not as cold as I remember Lake Ontario feeling like when I was young - your feet felt like ice cubes). For the end of September, that is pretty good!

Today (Sunday), on our way into the city and back for church, Fina worked on this handicraft.

She is making a scarf for her friend M's birthday this week, on a knitting loom. Knitting on a loom, either a straight board like this, or on a circular loom (they look like this) is really fun and easy for kids to do (compared to knitting with needles). Fina has made many a hat on her circular looms, mainly for her stuffed animal lambs. Knitting looms are also good for people with arthritis, etc.

Here is her nearly completed scarf. (It has been a joint effort between Fina and mom).  M's birthday party is on Tuesday, so we will finish it tomorrow.

In the evening, around 8pm local time, we went to the park to see the Blood Moon / Super Moon / Lunar Eclipse. Some friends met us there through the night. The kids all had so much fun running around our park in the dark. It was such a clear night that we saw so many stars, a satellite moving through the sky and quite a few falling stars as well as the eclipse. We were out for almost 2 hours.

We wanted to sketch the view, so Fina started sketching the moon before her friends arrived.

Then, this is a quick sketch she did while it was "eclipsing."

She was really too busy having fun with her friends to do more sketching than that, but I thought it was still cute!

September 25 AO yr 1, week 3

Week 3!  Wow, we have made it through two weeks already. Incredible. We have made it this far!

We read some more Peter Pan after finishing our math yesterday afternoon. We read chapter 4 and half of chapter 5. We went for a short bike ride with dad, and then Fina did another two episodes of her yoga. (Good thing, too. We had very little outside time. And please, oh please, mosquitoes, go away already!!!)

On to today. I gave her the option of working on her cursive s first or her math.  She said "poems." So, poetry it is!
Recitation: Lord's Prayer, The Apostles' Creed, and her two poems "Rain" and "Singing."
We read four new poems from our same poetry collection. She didn't want to stop.  "My Shadow," "System," "A Good Boy" and "Escape at Bedtime." We haven't found anything new to recite yet, but we will continue through the book until we find something to learn.

Fina has it in her mind that she is ready for winter, talking about making "tire sur la neige" etc and she wanted to see photos of snowflakes. So we digressed, and checked out this website that shows photos of snowflakes. If you decide to look at it, be sure to go to the last page of the slideshow. Very cool!

Then we tackled that cursive letter s again. It went much better. She was able to write "as," "sass" and "mass" today. We will continue to work on it, but we were both a little less frustrated with it today. I don't want her to feel like nothing is good enough, like a perfectionist, but yet, I need her to do her best.  Like perfect!  Very tricky to negotiate that. Just a reminder, faithful readers, we use the stickers to cover up mistakes. I think this is mostly encouraged when writing words (the idea is that you don't see the misspelled word and get the wrong spelling in your head) but it is working fine for cursive letters as well. Though she has asked "does it mean I didn't do a good job because there are so many stickers?" to which I replied "It means that you are practicing a lot!"

We read chapter 2 of An Island Story, "The Coming of the Romans." It tells of Julius Caesar coming to Britain and conquering it, though not feeling like it was a win, because he lost so many men and galleons (ships). Fina narrated it. And we put Julius Caesar in our timeline.

We read two Aesop's Fables. "The boy and the Filberts" which tells of the boy who couldn't get his hand out from the jar because he wouldn't let go of some nuts, and "Hercules and the Wagoner" that teaches us that heaven helps those who help themselves. In this second fable, the farmer's wagon gets stuck in the mud and he cries out to Hercules to help him, and the story says that Hercules actually comes and berates him for not trying to get his wagon out himself.  She narrated both short fables well.

Then, we read "Beauty and the Beast" from The Blue Fairy Book edited by Andrew Lang. There have been many discussion on various Charlotte Mason groups about these fairy tales as being too brutal for some kids, but this story was really fine, even for Fina who tends to have a dramatic response to things. There was nothing gory or brutal in it. We ended up reading the whole story (though we had intended to break it up) at Fina's insistence. I asked her to narrate back to me after a few pages and she said "Mom, you haven't read enough for me to narrate." So I kept on. I stopped maybe three times to have her narrate. And at the end, she gave me a decent summary of the overall story.  It was a fascinating fairy tale. We both enjoyed it. It is so neat to read the originals of well-loved Disney fairy tales. It is interesting to hear the differences.

We sang hymn 13E, the Holy and the Glory to God today. She is not always singing aloud, but I think it is getting better.

We finished with some MUS, doing sections 11E and 11F.

Now she is looking at the pieces of art by Corot. We looked up a photo of the Chartres' Cathedral. We got to see a detail of its rose window and Fina was quite pleased to see that. Many of you know of her affinity for stained glass windows! Here is a photo that is taken from the same angle as seen in Corot's painting.

Fun to see that low building in front of it, still standing from at least 1830 when Corot painted it.

We listened to some Brahms today, throughout our morning.

Fina said "I like homeschooling, because I get to do my school in my pjs." Funny!  I suppose we could get dressed to do our school, but it works fine like this for her. If she likes it, WONDERFUL!

Time for lunch (after she gets dressed, that is)!

September 24, AO yr 1, week 2

Yesterday afternoon, we went out to the park for a couple of hours. The sun had warmed things up nicely at that point of the day. While out there, we flew a kite for a bit. And Fina ran around playing, jumping off picnic tables and the like.  (The kite was down when I took the pic and somehow I got too involved in the kite flying to manage another pic.)

After a while, she comes to me (while I'm trying to finish reading the last half of the 6th and final volume of Charlotte Mason's work, Towards a Philosophy of Education. I'm reading the paraphrase in modern English. I had intended finishing all 6 before we began homeschooling, but that didn't happen.) and says "Mom, can't we please read Peter Pan while we are outside?"

So, I run in and grab our copy of Peter Pan (the original book by J.M. Barrie, with illustrations by Mabel Lucie Attwell. You can get it for free here. We bought a 2013 edition by Dalmatian Press at a used book sale somewhere. I see the $1.00 price scribbled in pencil on the first page.) and a fabulous made-of-denim quilt we use for outdoors (made with lots of love by my sister a few years ago. I bought denim squares at a thrift store and mailed them to her in Ontario and she made me a quilt with a water-resistant backing for outdoor use. I guess it is all my doing that she has now become an avid quilter. Correct me if I'm wrong, that was your first quilt, right CB?).

We find a lovely tree to sit under and I read chapters 2 and 3 to her.  Aren't these lovely colours?

She was listening so intently, it was quite something. There is something incredible about reading outside, lying on a blanket. Dad met us at the park after work and we walked around the path for a little while. We walked home (we live about 100 ft from this park) and Fina wasn't ready to come in yet. So she did a couple of episodes of her favourite yoga for kids out on our lawn.

I sat on our steps and read a bit more of my volume 6.  The mosquitoes started coming out at about 6pm, so we finally headed in for supper.

For those of you who know and love me, you will know that last November (November 3, to be exact), Fina and I started ourselves on a 1000 Hours Outside challenge. Basically it is a movement to get kids (and adults) outside more, rather than inside watching tv etc.  The website was started by a couple of moms (influenced by Charlotte Mason's ideas that kids should be outside for 4-6 hours a day) who wanted to counter the statistic that the average American kids watches 1200 hours of tv a year.  You can find their explanation here. Well, you will be proud to know that as of yesterday, we are 995.75 hours. And it is only the end of September! I am proud to know that we will very soon make it to our goal and I hope to greatly surpass it.  You can imagine that this isn't always easy in a Manitoba winter (or worse, a mosquito-riddled Manitoba summer). Thankfully, Fina isn't bothered by the -40C (yes, that is -40F too, for my American readers!) cold, so we did get out a lot this winter as well.

Try it yourself. Adults, kids, whatever. Even an hour a day outside is probably more that what many people are doing. It does make all the difference. I can't express how much I love it. Homeschooling is going to make this possible for us even now, during the schooling years. (Though kids do it while attending regular school as well. Their families just have to be more intentional about using non-school days, weekends, holidays, etc).

Another website and FB page that I really enjoy is http://www.activekidsclub.com/.  This is the brain-child of a Toronto (via Norway) mom who gives lots of tips and resources for spending time outside with kids, in all types of weather. (A shout out goes to my own Canadian-Norwegian friend who introduced me both to this website and the love of the outdoors with kids).  We do, as a culture, spend way too much times sitting inside (at a computer, tv, etc etc). Being out in the forest, out in a meadow, splashing through puddles, sliding down snow hills (tiny ones, this is FLAT MB after all), climbing on trees, looking at leaves, bugs, squirrels, flowers - these are activities that refresh us. We much prefer these free-play activities than scheduled extra-curricular ones.

*****
Well, time to start our day.

We did our morning prayer (and we have been doing night prayer in bed before going to sleep as well).
Fina decided to do some Handicrafts today (embroidery) before starting with her school work. She also swept the kitchen floor, and swiffered it with the dry swiffer cloths (she wanted to swiffer wet it too, but she got distracted with going upstairs to play with her doll house). We ended up not doing any school work until after lunch.

Poetry: Fina recited her two poems.  We read a new poem today, "The Land of Nod." I had thought she might like to recite it, but we have decided to wait for a "better" poem.

Burgess Birds Book, Chapter 1 "Jenny Wren Arrives." Narrated it well. I had her colour in a colouring page of a Carolina Wren, and that did not work. She, unlike most kids, didn't seem to concentrate as well while colouring. Funny!

Gen 8:13-22. Narrated the end of the flood well.

Cursive "s". Fina is still having trouble being consistent with her letter s. We wrote "as" and "sass."

So, I pulled out the old "cornmeal in a container" trick and we are working on forming the letter s with here index finger. I hope this will help. I am trying not to let her get frustrated, but she wants to do it right and just can't seem to form it properly consistently.

Yup, even in the cornmeal, she didn't really want to make an s. So she made an a.  She made some s's, but was still not happy with them, nor forming them easily the right way. We will start with the cornmeal s tomorrow.

Paddle to the Sea. We read chapter 2. She doesn't have the attachment (yet) that other kids seem to have to the story, but we are only on chapter 2. She listens to it and does narrate it.

"Bridge at Nantes." We looked at the painting and described it again.
Then, I wanted to try the second painting by our artist for the term, Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, "Chartres Cathedral."

I tried something different this time so she wouldn't get all freaked out like the first time.  We looked at it and spoke of it, and without warning I turned it over and both her and I tried recreating the basic idea of it on paper. (This probably wouldn't work with all kids, but she did well). Hers is on the right, mine is on the left. I am NOT an artist, but I thought I had better do it alongside with her.

Then we started trying to reproduce it while looking at it. Mine has a splash of colour on it.

She didn't get very far before wanting to move on and sculpt with her Thinking Putty for a bit.

We made people on our fingers.

Lastly, Fina did just a little bit of MUS, from 11C p 2  through to 11D.

We listened to Brahms a bunch of times through the day today.

***
A few things I've learned today:
- we need to slow down and repeat and repeat with the cursive. The letters a, m and n are ok, but s needs work before moving on.
- do not try homeschooling in the afternoon, unless absolutely necessary. It wasn't terrible, but it flows much more smoothly in the mornings. And now we didn't get outside, or do the other bunch of things we had done yesterday, for example. It slows us right down! (Fina also woke up at 6am this morning, instead of the 7:30 or 8 she is used to, because she had a bad dream. She went to cuddle in bed with dad to talk until after 7 when they came down. I think she is pretty done! We finished math around 4).
- keep at the artist study because Fina does have a good eye. I need to keep trying other ways of looking before moving back to the look-at-it-then-cover-it-up-and-narrate style.
- Fina doesn't work well with colouring while listening for narration. At least not now. We might try that again at a later date.

I will get the folksong in at some point. Right now, I don't want it to feel like a chore (for me or for her!) so we will come to it eventually. That, and the nature study painting with water colours. I haven't forgotten. I just need to work our schedule so we can do it.

Thanks for following our journey. If you are so inclined, please say a prayer for us. My good friend says it is a marathon, not a sprint. I can already see how right she is.