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!

AO year 1, week 24, January 16

I didn't post Fina's artwork for our church's "Keep Christ in Christmas" event. The kids all bring some art showing something about keeping Christ in Christmas and they have a little pizza party with games to celebrate. The art work is later judged by age category and the winners get a little prize. Well, when Fina was 4.5, this was her entry (she won a $10 gift card to Indigo).

We had written this description: The stars that brought the wise men to Jesus. The cross is to remind us that Jesus loves us (hearts). The music is from the angels. See the little angel at the bottom?

This year, at 7.5 years old, she entered this.

A few notable elements: The hay of the manger (below the manger) spills into the glowing cross.  Those are camels in the top right. Mary is kneeling at the manger and kneeling at the cross. Spot the two doves, representing the Holy Spirit (at each event, I guess.) And the heart of Jesus, bleeding with a crown of thorns, I think? The coloured things around the heart are rays of light with the people that Jesus loves, all different people.  We had gone to a talk at church before Christmas, a faith formation for adults (which Fina sat quietly and coloured through) and the pastor spoke about how without the cross and the resurrection, the birth of Jesus isn't anything special. We sang "Wood of the Cradle, Wood of the Cross" during that evening and we have had many lively discussions about that. Well, this piece of art is the fruit of such thought!

She won her age category again. She will receive her prize on Sunday.



On our way to the city yesterday, Fina spent some time working on her fingerknitting handicraft.

Yesterday, we also got Fina a pair of skis and we went out to ski for half an hour in the dark.

Fina also got a little Betta fish.  She has been wanting to have one to match nonno and nonna.

And yes, the two fish did FaceTime (a long standing dream of Fina's.) You will see our fish, Jim Shore (Jimmy for short) in the upper left hand corner of this screenshot.

This morning, we started with feeding our little fish, Jim Shore aka Jimmy.

And we listened to some Schubert over breakfast.

I read Matthew 2:1-12 and Fina narrated it well.
I read "Market Square Dog" from the James Herriot Treasury. It is a sweet story and Fina narrated it very well.
We reviewed a bunch of Shakespeare passages. Fina knows them all very well. We read aloud together the Parable of the Sower.

We started our next math lesson, lesson 12 (adding doubles) and Fina did lessons 12A and B.  The only two doubles Fina doesn't really know well is 6+6 and 7+7, but she is learning those!

We sang together our folk song.

We read "Grace Darling" from Fifty Famous Stories.  We looked her up on wikipedia and we saw a photo of the monument to her. It is quite a neat story.

Photo Creds

Fina reviewed her upper case cursive letters from A-L and we learned M and N.

We sang our hymn together.
I read poem 75 from The Oxford Book of Children's Verse, "Time," by John Huddlestone Wynne.

Fina read "The Three Billy Goats Gruff" from The Treadwell Primer to me. She is doing a wonderful job.

We did chapter 5 from our catechism book, looking at Ordinary Time.

This afternoon we went to the park for Fina to have a good workout with her skis. We were out for two hours, 1 hour and 45 of which she was on her skis! She LOVED it!

Around Christmas 2016

We haven't done much formal schooling around Christmas time, but we have done quite a lot of learning.

We have done a lot of reading lately.  We finished reading The Pink Fairy Book and have started on the Orange Fairy Book by Andrew Lang. Fina LOVES these stories! We read The Ox-Cart Man (again, we had read it years ago). We also read Snowflake Bentley by Jacqueline Briggs Martin. I highly recommend this one. It is very fun for winter!
Fina has been reading aloud to us (or to her ponies) frequently. Fina finished reading Tony's Birds aloud. Reading a few pages at a time, she got through it. I enjoy Millicent Selsam's early reader books very much.

We did chapter 15 and the Christmas section of our catechism book.

We are getting in A LOT of outdoor play time.  Here are a few snapshots.

She may be a bit dramatic.

snowshoeing in our yard

prairie girl mountaineering (on our parking lot snow pile, with a long skipping rope)

We have got to get her proper skis. These are plastic thrift store skis and they don't do much.

Fina has been enjoying watching this beed feeder. They tend to come for breakfast!

Fina has done a lot of watercolour painting and other art projects. She has been drawing, doing handicrafts, wrapping gifts for Christmas, listening to "Zecchino D'Oro" Christmas music, playing board games, just playing with this and that, and so much more.

We have been reading the Bible after dinner every night for a long while, but we are trying to be more intentional about it. Fina's homeschooling dad backed this version of the bible on Kickstarter a few years ago and it finally made it to print.  He has been reading to us from this Bibliotheca bible every evening since just before Christmas when it arrived and we have even been drawing names to narrate it. Fina enjoys listening to it and she continues to surprise me with her narrations. We started from the beginning and are still in Genesis. Biblioteca is interesting in that it doesn't have chapter and verse markings. And the 5 volumes are "proper" books, printed on nice non-wood paper, with sewed folios and cloth bound cover.

Fina has been wanting to cook and she made French Toast on Christmas morning. It was delicious (it was my first time ever making French toast. Who knows why I waited so long to try it!)

We also made our first tire-sur-la-neige (maple syrup on snow). Fun as always.

Here is the tiny art she did the week before Christmas that she wouldn't let me see. It was part of our Christmas present from her. For dad, she painted a little pig. For me she painted these lovely birds from Tony's Birds. My paper is just a couple of inches tall. She used a fancy thin marker and watercolours.

She got this mini knitting loom for Christmas and is working on knitting a tiny scarf for a pony on it!

My sister-in-law bought Fina all 5 Holling C Holling books for Christmas. Isn't it wonderful when people ask you what to get? I had given her a wishlist on Indigo.ca with all 5 books, telling her to choose a few (enough to get free shipping since we live 2500kms away from each other!) and she so generously purchased all 5! We are all set now for a good, long while!

I sort of pride myself in getting as much as I can used or free online, but the Holling books have eluded me at every used book sale over the last year and a half.  I have been signing out Paddle over and over again from the library. I am thrilled to have my own copy (of all of them)!

MOTHER CULTURE

My friend E, L and I have started a Manitoba Charlotte Mason group on Facebook and are hosting our first event, a gathering / mini-seminar in January. It is going to be great!

I have been waking up VERY early over the last few months, and on the advice of my good friend L, I am embracing it. Rather than uselessly spending my time on Facebook etc., I have decided to do some very focused reading (away from the distractions of other humans being awake in our house!). This is what I started doing in the mornings since just after Christmas:

• reading the readings of the day

• looking up said readings in Charlotte Mason's poetic writings based on the Bible, The Saviour of the World using the Logos app and Art M's linking them to their verses as explained here. (Art blogs at Charlotte Mason Poetry. I met him at the l'HaRMaS retreat and have been following his work since then. He is a busy man with a love of delving deeper into Charlotte Mason's writings.)

• reading the day's poetic verses and Bible verses in Edith Gells The Cloud of Witness.  Riverbend Press has put out a lovely reprint of it, but I'm currently using this free one online. Fina's homeschooling dad has ordered an old one for me as a late Christmas present from Abebooks.  I'm using Art M's calendar to follow along.  They have a facebook page set up for the Riverbend Press reprit here, and there you can find the link to the calendar.

• Fina's homeschooling dad and I have decided to read some writings of the doctors of the Church. (I'm not sure what took me so long to come to something like this. It isn't like I don't enjoy this type of reading. I just haven't been intentional about it. There was a lot of twaddle in my last few decades.) 

I would like to read Catherine of Siena's major treatise The Dialogue of Divine Providence and he is reading Thérèse de Lisieux's The Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. Two of the four women doctors of the Church.  The translations (from Italian and French respectively) that I have linked to above seem to be the best critical editions in English. 

I actually started reading Thérèse de Lisieux's work today and I'm hoping to read Catherine's as well. Both at the same time. We shall see!  I am also toying with the idea of simultaneously reading Catherine in Italian. This critical edition by Giuliana Cavallini (on whose work my English translation is from) is available online for some unknown reason (it is from the 1995) at the Italian website for "Centro Studi Cateriniani." 

Tonight, Fina's homeschooling dad thought to start Thérèse's autobiography aloud. Fina loved it and asked for him to read more. The beginning at least is written in a very conversational style, recounting stories of her childhood memories and was certainly understandable by Fina. What a life we have! 

• reading Charlotte Mason's works. I am currently reading volume II, Parents and Children. Both Fina's homeschooling dad and I are taking part in the Idyll Challenge, reading the 6 volumes over two years and each joining in a monthly video conference with a group of women (and he, with a group of men) to discuss the readings. We joined it in their fifth month. Art M had the idea to start it for men, and right away a sister group was started.  I am so thankful I was invited to take part it in this challenge when I was at the L'HaRMaS retreat in Ontario in the fall.

• other reading. I just am finishing up Megan Hoyt's A Touch of the Infinite: Studies in Music Appreciation with Charlotte Mason.  I had the pleasure of meeting her at l'HaRMaS as well.  A lovely woman and a wonderful book! I highly recommend it.  She talks of things practical, theoretical and philosophical. Her writing style is lovely.  I am following many trails she has put me on to see how I can improve our music studies. (She also wrote this lovely picture book which I bought at l'HaRMaS, Hildegard's Gift. Fina and I have enjoyed it and read through it a few times. The illustrations are wonderful and Fina has been inspired to imitate the drawing style.) I'm not sure what I will move on to next. Possibly Anne White's Minds More Awake: The Vision of Charlotte Mason which I have as an ebook. I also met Anne at l'HaRMaS. She is the sole Canadian on the AO advisory.

• typing. Amblesideonline has a section of their forum dedicated to transcribing various Charlotte Mason or Charlotte Mason related works that are within the public domain so that they can be compiled and edited etc. I have done a few paragraphs of typing. I don't mind typing, when I have the time. And I feel like I'm giving something back to this wonderful CM world.

• common place journal entries. All of the above items are fair game. I have made more entries in just these past three days than I had made in the last long while!

All this I have done this week, in the stillness, quiet, calm and dark hours of the early morning, to the light of a candle, with a nice cup of tea, sometimes a breakfast-y snack, sitting on the couch, just savouring and enjoying the new day that God has given me.

To those of you who know my daughter, she is pretty "present" when she is awake. Yes, she will play on her own, but one knows she is here when she is here! I love her and I love interacting with her, and with Fina's homeschooling dad. But these quiet times are such a blessing to me. I feel so much better starting my day in this way.

I have tried to read in the past, but it is difficult with the distractions around me. Others can tune them out, but I can't really. So this is working wonderfully for me. I hope to be able to keep it up! I already can see the fruits.

I am planning to start our schooling back in earnest next week. Three weeks off is quite a nice break!

Leading up to January 8

On Tuesday January 5, we did "this and that" at home in the morning and then went to our outdoor playgroup in the afternoon.  We were a small group, but we had so much fun. We went down on to the creek and the kids found a bicycle half frozen into the creek and they spent probably an hour trying to chip it out. Our friend T was able to make quite a hole in the ice. They all used long sticks to try to measure how deep the water was and it was just wonderful.

On Wednesday morning, as Fina was colouring my nails with pencil crayon in her newly built nail salon (!), she learned Bottom's Dream from A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act IV, Scene 1, lines 214-26.

I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream past the wit of man to say what dream it was. Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream.… The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream. It shall be called “Bottom’s Dream” because it hath no bottom.

Aside from her bad attitude (I fear this will be a trope throughout the life of my blog, and hopefully not through Fina's actual life, though we will continue to work on it), she was able to recite the whole thing in less than ten minutes. I can not recite it. She certainly can! Nonna would say B-R-A-T!!!

Today is the actual feast of the Ephiphany, though the Canadian church celebrated it on Sunday, and the wise men made their way to our little nativity set.

Later on (after public school let out), she had a lovely indoor and outdoor playtime with her good friend K across the street, and was even invited in for dinner with them. My little girl is growing up. They had a wonderful time! Here they are playing outside with K's little sister C.  I can't say how important these friendships forged in our little town are to us.

On Thursday, January 7, we did our christmas catechism. Chapter 6 is about God sending Jesus to us and about the Holy Family. We also did the art section on p 218. We also did the Christmas section in the liturgical year part of our book, p 157-160.
She cuddled in bed with dad for a long while, reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and also from A Bear Called Paddington.

Fina and I got out for (nearly) three hours. We had lunch up on the top of a snow hill and then wandered around town and stopped and played in various spots. She again worked on a never-ending igloo.

When we came in, she did a whole bunch of Lego.

On Friday, we read the entire The King of the Golden River by John Ruskin. What a great story. It is from our free-read list.  Fina asked to read something from Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories, so we read "How the Leopard got his Spots" and I had Fina narrate it. It is from week 12, but since she asked, we read it.

We also read the first two fairy tales from The Red Fairy Book, edited by Andrew Lang. This is also from our free-read list.  Fina loves the fairy tales from his The Blue Fairy Book that is scheduled in our readings, and has so much enjoyed the Fairy Tales from Norway that I thought I should give her more fairy tales.

It was a stay-indoors-and-read type of day. Fina also had some Lego going on and off all day.

Leading up to Monday January 4, 2016!

We have been playing lots of Ludo with our 4-1 game board from Ikea. Fina has won every single Ludo game she has played. It is kind of freaky!!!

On the 31st, we had a calm day at home. She kept saying to everyone (in person, or on Facetime with extended family) "see you next year!" and having a blast with it.

On January 1, she went outside to play with her good friend K and they were out from about 6 til 8pm. They had so much fun playing outside in the snow in the dark. With sand toys, shovels, digging, singing, etc.

Here she is building a snow castle with her sand toy.

On the 2nd, we went to play in the forest with our good friends. The morning was lovely and sunny, but we went in the afternoon when it was cloudy, but still lovely and not too cold.

Here she is sledding with Acorn the chipmunk (wearing his loom knitted scarf we made last year),

as we waited for our friends to arrive.

On Sunday January 3, we finally got to go out for sushi after church. Fina has been begging for a long time to go for sushi.  One of our favourite places in Winnipeg is SushiJet, they have an all-you-can-eat type of deal, where you order off the menu (not buffet).  Yes, she did actually choke on an avocado roll (actually choke as in that I had to stick my fingers in her mouth and pull out the offending seaweed strip that covers the roll right out of her), but she still had fun!

Oh yes, that is Acorn enjoying some miso soup.

We also swung by our mall to make a return, and Fina got to spend a little bit of a time in front of her favourite huge fireplace with real flames. (It was nice (!) to see the mall still had their Christmas decorations up - though they started with them in November - in this seemingly take-everything-down-on-January-1st protestant world. Christmas isn't over yet, people! It is funny how Christmas has taken over advent and then people just give up.)

On Monday January 4, we headed out to the forest with our friends J and J. It was a beautiful, sunny day. Fina's disposition was less than sunny (!), but still it was a lovely time out.

On our way, we stopped at our town's nativity scene. Fina loves it.

Then, after her first day back to school after the Christmas break, we had our friend K over for a "party" that she and Fina planned out. There was lots of dancing, fancy costumes, a fancy dinner menu planned out by Fina and lots of fun to be had. Then we went out in the 50km winds and got in some more outdoor play time, in the dark, with their matching reflective vests.

Leading up to December 25

On Tuesday morning, we read The Tempest for Kids by Lois Burdett in the "Shakespeare can be fun" series. We had picked it up years ago at the St Vital Centre Used Book Sale in Winnipeg. Burdett is (was) an elementary school teacher in Stratford, Ontario. She retells the story in rhyming couplets. The pages are filled with drawings and comments by her students. It is very cute. I'm on the look out for other Shakespeare plays by her. A fun addition to our Nesbitt retelling. She sat spellbound through the nearly 60 minutes it took me to read it to her.

We are almost finished reading Pinocchio. Two more chapters to go.  Fina is really enjoying it. So am I. (Terrible, that I had never read the original. Though we are Italian, and have heard many of these stories from my mom. We never read it. Though I feel like we did a watch a live-action movie in Italian. I'll have to ask my mom about it!)

We also read through a short book of poetry we had gotten from the library. The old standards are all in there.

Fina and dad are continuing to make their way through The Chronicles of Narnia again.

Fina finger-knitted herself a little snake, giving him sticker eyes. Very cute.

On Tuesday afternoon, we  had our outdoor playgroup. And, drum roll please, we FINALLY got into the forest. Fina was thrilled to the highest heights! (She had asked for "getting into the forest" as a Christmas gift. The creek was finally frozen. See my December 22 post!)

She is smiling so hard her face looks like it is going to explode!!!

A magical land indeed. Fina is the one on the left.

Another mom and I went down to see if the creek was frozen. When we had assessed that it was, we came back to the group (they were sledding on the hill) and I called to the kids that it was frozen. Fina and her gang just ran over and jumped down the bank of the creek and ran right into the forest all on their own, before any of us moms had a chance to gather our stuff and go in there. It was so nice to see and hear them from this side of the creek, running and laughing and throwing themselves into it.  What a moment of pure joy and bliss!  We will be heading there again today I'm sure.

After supper on Tuesday, Fina and I went for an hour jaunt through town. I have no pics to show, but there was this lovely, fluffy, giant-flakes type of snow. It wasn't windy, so the flakes were floating and swirling down gently. It was like being in a movie. Just lovely. We stopped by the town Nativity scene twice. Fina had to clear the snow from baby Jesus' face.

On Wednesday morning at 7:40, Fina is outside in the dark with a flashlight looking for my loaf pan that she had put out on Tuesday night for catching snow for tire sur la neige. She can't find it, it has been buried in the new snow!

(It is now Saturday morning, and we have yet to find that loaf pan. Oh my...)

Dad read the last two chapters of Pinocchio to Fina. I had to read them myself, as I had read the entire book with her. It was a great ending.

Thursday was Christmas eve. We had a busy day in the city. As you might recall, Fina was chosen to be the lion in the nativity scene at our church. We left before 9 for rehearsal at 10. Church was at 4. Fina was a great lion and the whole thing was excellent!

Here she is, hiding, waiting to be called out to the nativity scene (rehearsal - though she hid herself very well during the actual presentation!).  During the homily (when this living nativity scene took place) our pastor brought the lion out last and made the point that with Jesus, even the most ferocious animal will be tamed and the lion will be friends with the lamb.

These pics are all during the rehearsal. We will hopefully get some pics of the actual presentation. The archive ministry photographers / videographers were out in full force.

We went to Ikea in between rehearsal and Christmas eve mass for lunch. We also picked up a few gifts for ourselves there.  When we came home, Fina set up and decorated our tree and we opened our presents.

Yes, that is a very sparsely decorated tree. 

I suspect she will continue to add to it over the Christmas season!

Here are their IKEA clocks (so Fina can use it to tell time!) 

and the 4-in-1 wooden board game set we bought there for dad.

Friday was Christmas day. We read "The Christmas Kitten" in James Herriot's Treasury for Children. That chapter isn't scheduled in the AO list. Many people read it at Christmas. It was cute. We made pizzelle, coloured and regular.

I made ricotta pies, with the secret Greco recipe, and with my homemade ricotta.

And I finished up the manicotti (my mom's recipe) for our Christmas meal.  We had a surprise visit from our friends who took Fina to the park to play for a little while, which was great.

Fina also played the piano for a bit, asking dad to transcribe what she was playing. Which he diligently did (well, -ish. He transcribed something!) It was quite the thing. Here is a little video clip of it, to add to your festive cheer. The funniest thing is that after she would play her phrase, she would then hum it, in her Fina-fashion. Just hilarious! And this is the typical Fina "I love to look at myself in the reflection of our uber-shiny piano" look!

What do you think? Our little composer in the making!!!

We spent the rest of the day playing games, including Ludo and Checkers from dad's new 4-in-1 wooden game set. We also played Disney Monopoly. It was the best monopoly game Fina has accomplished.

A blessed Christmas season to you, my faithful blog readers!