AO year 1, week 20, November 30

A few more things from yesterday:

This is how we recite Shakespeare around here. 

I asked her to please open up a little hole near her head so I could hear her more clearly.

Fina painted all of the Jesse tree ornaments she had drawn. She did a great job!

For the last bunch of years, we used these free printable ornaments that the children can cut out and colour.  They are wonderful! And they do the "O Antiphons" on the last 7 days.

We attended our first outdoor playgroup since we have returned home. Fina just LOVED seeing all her friends and rambling around the forest with them. It was great. Here are some pics. (Check out the beaver's hard work.)

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Today, Fina started the morning with doing some Art For Kids Hub How to Draw episodes. She loves to draw. I have sung their praises before. Such fun stuff. Fina also listened to some Zecchino D'Oro songs while she worked.

I printed off a page from the Math-U-See worksheet generator for Fina to review her lesson 9 material (adding plus 9). She thought and acted as though she was frustrated, but she remembered her facts and did the page quickly.

We read the story of the three men in the fiery furnace from Daniel 3. I stopped various times and Fina gave an excellent narration throughout.

We started lesson 10, (adding plus 8) and Fina did 10A.

We pulled out Jacques-Louis David's "Death of Socrates" again, and Fina spent some time drawing from it. This is not what I would call a detailed drawing, but this was her rendition of what is going on.

The guy IS crying, and Socrates does have his finger pointing upwards! Ha!

We continued on with our cursive, learning the upper case letter A.

We sang our advent hymn, "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel."
We reviewed our last few recitations of Shakespeare. And we started our next passage, from Twelfth Night II, iii, 48-53, as spoken by Feste. Fina learned the first line today.

What is love? Tis not hereafter.
Present mirth hath present laughter.
     What's to come is still unsure.
In delay there lies no plenty,
Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty.
     Youth's a stuff will not endure.

I also read the parable of the Mustard Seed to her, from Matthew 13. My intention is for Fina to learn to recite it.

We read the next two poems, "Twice Times" and "The Morning Walk," from Now We Are Six.
I read chapter 9 from The Burgess Bird Book, about the woodcock and the sandpiper. We watched a few videos to see and hear the birds.

Fina read a few pages from Plenty of Fish. Her reading is really coming along nicely.
I read another story from our free read, The Pink Fairy Book.

Fina spent a bunch of hours playing outside with her friend T, and then K joined them after school. The sun goes down early, and they are enjoying playing outside in the low light!

AO year 1, week 20, November 28

We are finally back into the swing of things.

Yesterday was the first Sunday of Advent. So we started our Jesse Tree. Upon the advice of a good friend, E., we are using this website from Loyola Press for the readings. We cut out two inch circles from some cardstock and Fina decided to draw the picture on each ornament. She punched a hole in each one and they are all drawn and ready to be painted, tied with a yarn and hung on our little tree.

Here they are, all drawn and ready to be painted

our tree, the first ornament is towards the bottom 

and we will work our way up to Christmas

Day 1, the Jesse Tree stump/root itself

This morning, we did chapter 12 of our catechism book. We are jumping around a bit, to work with the liturgical seasons etc.
I read chapter 12 of Our Island Story, the story of King Arthur. I read it in chunks and she narrated it all very well. She enjoyed it. So did I.
We sang our folksong, "My Paddle / Land of the Silver Birch."
We reviewed the points of the compass.
We re-read a bunch of poems from Now We Are Six.  And we read one new poem, "Explained." It was very cute.
I had her recite all of her Shakespeare passages. She remembered all of them perfectly. Even the most recent one, Sir Toby Belch's speech from Twelfth Night. We'll move on to our next passage. I'm also wanting to have Fina memorize a parable. I'm not sure which one yet.
We sang our hymn, "Canticle of the Sun" and began our new hymn for Advent, "O Come, O Come Emmanuel." We sang the first verse and then Fina asked to continue to the second verse, and she surprised me - she knew the second verse off by heart as well! And she was really singing nicely and loudly, participating along with me, which was great.
I had Fina review all her cursive letters. We will continue on with the upper case letters.

We read the Fir-tree story from Lang's Pink Fairy Book as part of our free reads. It is a very cute story.

Then Fina went outside to play all afternoon with her friend T. She has had a few fun outside hours with her friends since we returned.

Speaking of outside time, on October 31st, we completed our second year of the 1000 hours outside challenge. In 2015, our first year, we reached 1084 hours. In 2016, we got to 1384 hours. I'm pretty impressed with us!

We are back!

On October 12, Fina and I left for our trip to Ontario. Somehow, in the morning, she managed to do the following:

She did the test for lesson 9 of our math, adding +9.
Fina finished reading "The Gingerbread Boy" also. And we listened to some Zecchino D'Oro.
And she wrote a goodbye note to dad in cursive letters.

We got in more school than I was expecting, seeing as it was seamlessly happening as we just lived our morning. (I can see why some people love unschooling!)

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We returned from our visit in Ontario last week. We had a LOVELY visit with my family. Busy, but lovely.  We had a couple of weddings (two of my sisters), a baptism (my little newborn niece - Fina just LOVED her) and an extended visit from some third cousins visiting from Italy to improve their English.

We didn't get to much official schooling, but we learned and lived so much! Fina read everything she could get her hands on, and her progress over the last few months has been astounding!
We went to see "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" at Stratford. It was great fun.
We made it to a couple of petting zoos, a wonderful aqarium (Ripley's, at the base of the CN Tower. I would highly recommend it!), up on the glass floor of the CN Tower, to Niagara Falls a couple of times, pumpkin picking, pumpkin carving, apple picking, trick-or-treating, she climbed a great many numbers of trees, we ate lots of yummy food, we spent a lot of time just hanging out with our family, Fina got very spoiled by many people in their 20s and 30s who just adore having her around,

Here are some pics of some of the fun things we did.

new baby cousin

photo bombed by a bride and groom

apple picking

Lake Ontario

flower girl

climbing downed trees

"The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" at Stratford, ON

wedding shower

Niagara

reading to her cousin

Sitting on the glass floor up in the CN tower

swimming with the sharks at the Ripley's Aquarium

learning to cook passatini with nonna bis (my grandmother)

Wpg airport, coming home

the joys of finding snow!!!

Thanks for joining us!

Going on hiatus

Fina and I are going away for a bunch of weeks (dad is staying home!) for a couple of family weddings and more. We will be doing lots of reading aloud, lots of Fina reading aloud, some work on our cursive writing, and we plan on doing A LOT of nature study. We are going to southern Ontario and are looking forward to enjoying some of the fall colours we don't see as easily in Manitoba.

There probably won't be any updates on the blog until we get back. So stay tuned and have a wonderful continuation of autumn!

Here is a pic from our thanksgiving wiener / marshmallow roast with our friends J and J

Chilly co-op October 7

We had our 8th Co-op time today. It was VERY cold, even for us Manitobans. It was damp and drizzly, but the kids were troopers.  We were able to cover everything we wanted to. We had to change our nature study from our regular paint-something-you-see to a spoken nature narration. They did a great job explaining what they had found for their nature study.

Afterwards, we built ourselves a nice fire and roasted some marshmallows while the children played.

It was a great day! It is such a blessing to have friends to share these moments with. It is incredible to learn together.

Here are some pics. I didn't get many as my fingers were frozen! We even got a bit of snow.

Fina RUNNING to meet her friends who were arriving

Picture study - a Rembrandt Self-Portrait

some phys ed!

The dying embers of our fire

Thanks for joining us!

Outdoor playgroup and October 6, AO year 1, week 19

A year ago today, we officially started our outdoor playgroup. It started with a few moms and kids getting together to go outside and play, and then, a year ago, we decided to promote it within our community. At our highest days, we have had over a dozen moms and over two dozen kids.

It has really been a wonderful year! It has been an awesome place for Fina to stretch out and grow, to try new things we would NEVER had even thought to try on our own and to spend some quality time, playing freely in nature.  Here are some pics that show her in different environments and seasons. A handful of these pics were not taken at our outdoor playgroup, but for the most part, these are the kinds of things we do. I can not tell you that strong friendships that have been made here. Incredible. Check out this year in review. It's a pretty good year, I'd say. I'm so thankful for homeschooling. It has really allowed us to spend this kind of time out in nature.  (Here is my chance to remind you of the 1000 hours outside website too.)

Sometimes, I just can't believe how blessed my Manitoba life really is.

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We started our school day today with listening to some Schubert over breakfast.

We have been reading from Lang's Pink Fairy Book every day, either in the mornings, or at bedtime, or both. They are many Japanese fairy tales in this collection, and we have been enjoying them.

Fina did some handicraft throughout the morning. Surprisingly, today, she was able to concentrate on her narrations while doing this handicraft. (The handicraft is a surprise hat for her baby cousin, L. So, T, don't let on you know!)

I read Joshua chapter 3, the crossing over the Jordan to the promised land. Fina gave an excellent narration.

From Now We Are Six, I read the two poems "King Hillary and the Beggerman" and "Swing Song."

Fina recited "What country friends is this" perfectly, in time for tomorrow's co-op. And she was able to *nearly* perfectly recite "Out o' tune, sir" as well. We will continue working on that.

We sang our folksong, which she actually participated well in today.

We reviewed direction, north, south, east and west, comparing them to our house. She did great!

I read two nursery rhymes from our Italian book, "L'omin di panpepato" and "La gallinella rossa." She enjoyed them today.

We sang our hymn, "Canticle of the Sun." She participated well in this today as well.

We read the story of Shakespeare's "Winter's Tale" from Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare. I knew nothing about this story. I read it in chunks and Fina gave some wonderful narrations from it.  We read the whole thing.

Fina read a few pages of "The Gingerbread Boy" aloud to me. She is doing a great job with her reading.

Fina did 9F from her math, as well as the extra activities for lesson 9. She is ready to take her test for this lesson, adding +9.

Throughout the morning, she finished the hat.

Is she happy or what?

She has now begun on loom knitting a matching scarf for baby L.

It is so cold here, we are both feeling very wimpy about the temperature today. It is plus 6, feels like plus 2. We have a few errands to run this afternoon, and I was planning on going outside to play and to do some nature study. But I think we will bake something warm and yummy instead.  We aren't usually afraid of the temperature, but we are just taking a wimp day today. Do not be afraid, we won't be like this often!