Wednesday April 6, AO year 1, week 16

On Tuesday we had our outdoor playgroup. It was a blizzardy April day, but the kids had such great fun in the swirling snow. Fina never complains that she is tired or cold or that she doesn't want to walk or that she wants to go home. That is a blessing for me. We were outside for about 4 hours.

In the evening, Fina even tried to get a friend to come outside to play with her on such a wintery day, but K didn't want to come out and play. Fina contented herself with doing two episodes of her yoga.

We have continued singing "O Canada" in French. Incredible. Whatever Fina doesn't know off by heart, it is by my laziness. She is a sponge that could learn so much more than what I'm teaching her!

This morning, I read "Farmer Weatherbeard" and "Minnikin" from The Red Fairy Book, as part of our free reads.

We listened to our folksong, the "Ice Worms Nest Again," for the last time. Then we started our new folksong, "I've been working on the railroad." Fina is enjoying it, actually. I'm having a hard time getting myself into folksongs, though we have often sung the Ice Worms one out and about. It is catchy.

Our bean plant is coming along nicely.

We noticed that the primary leaves (the two at the bottom) are dying, now that they have done their job of feeding the plant. Interesting!

These tiny things in the middle are buds / flowers we think.

I read through our Sunday readings. The Gospel is Jesus asking Peter to "feed his sheep."

We went through our memorization box.  Fina finished her Orsino passage "If music be the food of love, play on." Wonderful!

Pretty good for her first day learning the ending!

We read three new poems from When We Were Very Young: "The Invaders," "Before Tea" and "Teddy Bear."  All three were cute poems. We need to pick a new one to memorize. We just haven't "hit" upon one yet.

We continued with our learning to read, learning the letters j and w today. Fina read book 1:7 "Jig and Mag." She does wonderfully!

She wanted to do some reading and narration, so we read from Fifty Famous Stories Retold.  We read the story of "Inchcape Rock." She narrated it so well.  We looked up this painting of the location.

Peter Graham "The Inchcape Rock" 1908

She wanted to continue, so I read the two sections that are scheduled in week 17, "Sir Philip Sidney" and "The Ungrateful Soldier" and she narrated those as well. It was great! Fina tends to have a much easier time connecting with 50 Famous Stories compared to Our Island Story. They are little biographies, which just proves that biography is a great door into history!

Fina did 7B in her math, continuing to add plus 2.

We did Chapter 11 from our catechism book. We also came upon Peter being asked by Jesus to take care of his friends and how Jesus' friends make up the Church. Connections, connections.

We also did question 9 from The Baltimore Catechism.

What a great start to week 16!

We listened to some Schubert as I prepared lunch and Fina coloured and drew a pic of her guardian angel.

I guess her guardian angel could be the archangel Gabriel. A wee bit lofty, but still!

After lunch, we are going out to make a little fire in the park. We will let you know how it goes! Something along the lines of a fairy fire, a small fire for fairies!

April 4, AO year 1, week 15

We reviewed book 1:6 of our Bob Books on Facetime with some of our family members on Sunday.

I like the speed (or lack thereof) with which we are learning to read. Nice and slow. Short lessons every few days. It is going wonderfully!

We started today with listening to the entire Schubert Die Schöne Müllerin cycle.

We made our way through our memorization box. We also reviewed a bunch of poems from When We Were Very Young.

For math, we started the commutative property of plus 2. Fina did 7C.

I read chapter 12 of Paddle to the Sea and Fina narrated it. We followed Paddle's journey on our map of the Great Lakes.

We did our second picture study of the term.  Jacques Louis David's "Oath of the Horatii." Fina looked at it in silence for three minutes and then gave a great verbal narration.

At our last co-op, we looked at Rembrandt's The Oath of the Batavians. How serendipitous. At co-op we spoke about what an oath is etc., and now the very next week, this is our painting. Such wonderful connections are being made!

We did chapter 25 of our catechism, which deals with the Easter season.

We sang our current folksong, "When the Ice Worms Nest again." I think I have said it already, but I need to prepare the next folksong.

I read the entire story of St. Cuthbert from Our Island Saints. We were scheduled to read half of it in week 15, but Fina asked me to continue. It was an interesting story.

I read her one tale from The Red Fairy Book, our current free read: "The Nettle Spinner."

Fina learned the fourth line of Orsino's "If music be the food of love..." passage from the opening of Twelfth Night.

Yesterday, I had sung "O Canada" in French a few times with Fina. Today, she was able to sing most of it in French on her own.  We are going to learn it at co-op, but if Fina already knows it, she can "possibly" help out by singing along.

It is a beautiful, sunny day and Fina got to spend some time of the afternoon outside playing with her friend.

We have completed week 15 and will start week 16 on Wednesday. Tomorrow is Tuesday and we have our regular outdoor playgroup.

Co-op on March 31

We had such a lovely 5th co-op meeting yesterday! It was great having two of the older siblings with us (as it was their spring break from PS.)

One of our moms gave us such a wonderful explanation about "elocution" and the kiddies did a great job reciting their passages to all of us. Fina continues to say that her favourite part of co-op is recitation. She just loves to recite! It is great for her to have an appreciative venue!

The picture study was also wonderful (this just shows us that even pulling a painting out of a library book works well too!).

These kids really love their handicraft work! They continue to amaze me, right from the tiniest one. Such lovely stitches we saw!

Fina was just out of the handicraft pics somehow.

Nature study is always great. We took a look at the common lilac, Syringa vulgaris, as buds were starting to appear. The dry brush renditions were great! Here is Fina's. She can't quite contain herself. She starts off by doing a 1:1 rendition of what she sees (which I should photograph, because it is good) but she just HAS to add her on artistic touches (which is also great!)

We had a lovely lunch and play time in the park as well.
What a wonderful time!

March 30, AO year 1, week 15

On Tuesday, we had a lovely get together in the big back yard of one of our friends. There were more than 20 kids there (it is Spring Break here in MB) and a bunch of moms. It was so wonderful! All in all, Fina and her friend K were out from 9:45am until 8:15pm.  We were at our friend's house from 10:30 until after 5 and then Fina and K had a quick something to eat and continued playing in our courtyard. Such a wonderful time! (This is the wonderful weather period between snow and mosquitoes in MB. You can't quite spend 10 hours outside in summer. Sometimes, but not always.

Today (on Wednesday) we started the morning listening to some Schubert while Fina did some drawing.

She used one of these "learn how to draw characters" books

We did some math work. Fina finished up Test 6, writing the numbers from 0-100.  She still has a tiny bit of confusion yet with 20, 21, 22, so we worked on that.

I read "The Ass and the Load of Salt" and "The Lion and the Gnat" from Aesop Fables. Fina narrated them well.

I read "Prince Hyacinth" from The Blue Fairy Book.  She enjoyed it, but gave a sort of mumbly narration.

We continued with our learning to read with Bob books. We finished reading pages 5-9 of book 1:6 "Dot and the Dog."  She is doing really well.

We worked through our memorization box. Fina learned the third line of the Orsino passage she is working on from Twelfth Night.

She did an episode of her yoga. It had been a long time. (When you spend so much time outside, you don't really need to do yoga as an exercise.)

Here is our  black turtle bean sprout. A new trifoliate leaf set has grown in the middle, plus a few other tiny ones. So fun!

We spent the afternoon playing outside with some friends, at various places around town.

Tomorrow we have our coop. We have the older PS siblings with us, so that will be fun!

March 28, AO year 1, week 15

We had such a blessed holy week and Easter. Fina really enjoyed the liturgies this year. We were invited out to some friends' house from church. They have a daughter who is a year older than Fina. She had a great time and so did we.

We did a bit of school work this morning.
We started with our math test for chapter 6. She did fine with the addition etc, but she still needs a little work with the counting to 100.

We continued on with her reading. She read the first 4 pages of book 1:6. She is enjoying it.

We look chapter 9 of our catechism book as well as the section on Easter.

I read two new poems from When We Were Very Young: "The Mirror" and "Halfway Down." They were both cute.

We worked our way through her memorization box.  All of her passages are great. We started Orsino's passage from Twelfth Night "If music be the food of love, play on"." Fina memorized the first two lines.

Then Fina was very busy preparing for Rarity's birthday party.

Fina and her friend K have been playing outside all afternoon. They will come in for supper and for the party.

Very fun!

March 24, AO year 1, week 15

Today we did a bit of school work this morning.

We started again with our reading.  Short "i" as in "did."  We did the lessons and Fina was able to read book 1:5, "Dot and Mit."  She continues to enjoy it.

We sang through our current folksong. "When the Ice Worms Nest Again." We will have to change to our next one soon.

Fina did a lesson of math, 6F. Next time we will do the test for lesson 6 and move on to adding by 2.

I read from 1 Samuel 17:1-54 (David and Goliath) and Fina gave a good narration.

We reviewed the questions we have done so far from The Baltimore Catechism, 1-3 and 6. She knows them all, and even anticipated Question 6 before I asked it. Wonderful!

We worked through her Memorization box. She now has the newest Shakespeare passage memorized well.

It was a bit slow going today, but it was fine. We have a few things left to finish up week 15.  We will take a break now for Easter and finish up on Monday, hopefully.

We had a great afternoon out at our park with her little friend M. It was a lovely and sunny day, but there was a bit of a cold wind.

Happy Easter everyone!

leading up to Wednesday March 23, AO year 1, week 15

Tuesday March 22

Fina was so excited about learning to read that we continued on to Book 1:2 ("Sam") and book 1:3 ("Dot").  It is great to see her so excited about reading. "I just discovered that all you have to do is sound out the letters. I never knew that," she said. Wonderful!

We spent a great afternoon with our outdoor playgroup. So muddy and so fun. (It was a bit chilly, but Fina had a great time!)

Here she is in the middle with a small section of our outdoor playgroup. Little piggies in the mud!

Wednesday March 23

Every morning we check on our bean plant. It is really coming along nicely! Fina enjoys talking about the trifoliate leaves and such.

Today we finished up our chapter on "St Bridget" in Our Island Saints which was scheduled last week. She didn't really narrate it.

She wanted me to read from our current free-read book, The Red Fairy Book. So I read "Twelve Brothers," "Rapunzel" and "Mother Holle." We both enjoyed these three fairy tales.

She asked to do her reading next, she is so excited!  We did book 1:4 ("Mac").  The new sound is the letter B: the lower case b is easily confused with upper case B. (Hence why cursive is better than print. No confusion there!!!)  She is really enjoying reading.

Next, I read "Whittington and the Cat" from Fifty Famous Stories Retold. We broke it up into the 5 chunks and she gave wonderful narrations! It is such a great story.

We worked through our memorization box. We finished the bonus passage from The Tempest I, v, 266-270.  She has it almost memorized now, she learns so quickly. Olivia's passage  "Thy tongue, thy face ... Even so quickly may one catch the plague?" She has stick-to-it-ness, that is for sure. She learned it by repeating it a bunch of times in 5 or 6 minutes.

I read a few poems to her from When We Were Very Young: "Shoes and Stockings," "Sand-between-the-toes" and "Little Bo-Peep and Little Boy Blue." She loves poetry.

We did chapter 18 of our catechism book, which talks about the Last Supper. And we did the holy week section at page 165 and following.

I put on some Schubert as we had lunch.

There are a bunch of things I'm trying to find time for during our week, such as working on some more creative writing, getting in some more time for painting and drawing, and I would like her to try to write her own poem. But I'll let her lead on that for now.

This afternoon, we are going outside to enjoy the sunshine (and hopefully a bike ride).

Thanks for joining us!