Term 1 exams

Fina is really loving this Bernat Velvet yarn. I have to admit, it is quite nice. It would make a good scarf, actually. It's sort of like a very fuzze fleece. Here are her first two completed projects. For your reference, these tiny ponies are two inches high.

Fina's Spanish is beyond impressive to me!

We did our term 1 exams last week and they went really well. Fina had the most trouble with the books I was expecting, The Story of Canada and Our Island Story. Her narrations of those two aren't terrible during the term, but I knew she hadn't really connected well with either of them. I know she is getting a connection to the history we are studying through biographies and historical fiction, however. She could tell me a lot about Tecumseh through these alternate readings. It is fascinating to observe the exam process.

I love this quote from Charlotte Mason's third volume, pp. 170-171:

Children make large demands upon us. We owe it to them to initiate an immense number of interests. Thou hast set my feet in a large room; should be the glad cry of every intelligent soul. Life should be all living, and not merely a tedious passing of time; not all doing or all feeling or all thinking––the strain would be too great––but, all living; that is to say, we should be in touch wherever we go, whatever we hear, whatever we see, with some manner of vital interest. We cannot give the children these interests; we prefer that they should never say they have learned botany or conchology, geology or astronomy. The question is not,––how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education––but how much does he care? and about how many orders of things does he care? In fact, how large is the room in which he finds his feet set? and, therefore, how full is the life he has before him?

"How much does she care? and about how many orders of things does she care?" Well, she cares about Tecumseh. And that is saying something!

Her recitations were stellar, as always. She had some trouble with Shakespeare. She was unable to tell me anything about Much Ado About Nothing. Well, hardly nothing. She knew that there was some sort of love commotion, but that's about it.

I've told you before, it's always interesting.

And we started term 2 yesterday. I've got a few things I want to change this term, so we will see how that goes.

Spring will come!

Spring will come, we know it! But not quite yet!

Over March, we finished up our second term and had our exams. Fina is doing really well with our Spanish lessons, our sol-fa, and our Bible lessons. She gave great narrations for everything. We will continue to monitor our history and geography lessons, which still didn't provide the best narrations.

We had a wonderful holy week and were able to participate in the awesome liturgies.

Here she is reorganizing flash cards from our Spanish story. She was able to retell the story to me wonderfully!

Enjoy some winter pics!

skating on the slushy creek

building with chunks of ice

building a fort with snowballs

the sugar water didn't run from the maple trees in time for our local maple sugaring off festival

built a snow chair at outdoor playgroup

and skating on the "thawed and then re-frozen" creek, on April 5 2018!!!

It's March!

One day last week, we got no less than five lovely recitations of "Exodus 12:31-36" by Twilina. They were lovely! Then, we learned about quotation marks and various speakers as Fina read the narration and Twilina did the spoken parts, voicing pharaoh. Fun! As always, Fina so enjoys reciting. She is very expressive!

I want to recommend "Children of the Open Air" for Solfege lessons (you can find her channel on YouTube). Fina has learned how to notate these three little songs. Incredible.

She is quite proud of herself and has them hanging on the white board. I'm beyond impressed myself, actually.

Our math is going really well. We are at number 22 of Richele Baburina's The Charlotte Mason Elementary Arithmetic Series volume 1.

Fina is really excelling in our Spanish lessons as well. We have learned the "Padre Nuestro," she enjoys the Spanish songs and poems. We continue to use "La oruga muy hambrienta" story as our backdrop for learning vocabulary, grammar etc. She can narrate that book in Spanish so well!

Our recitations are fun, as always. She now knows Psalm 23 and is able to recite it from memory.

We are enjoying our composer (Handel) and artist (John Constable) for the term.

We do 20 minutes of piano every morning before our school lessons. She is enjoying it. I'm glad we waited.

Fina loves The Wanderings of Odysseus. We had gotten ahead in this literature book, so today I gave her the exam question for the term, before continuing on in the story.

Tell me about Odysseus on Calypso's island:

Odysseus landed on Calypso’s island. And he went up and she fell in love with him. And then he ended up staying with her, because she said “stay with me”  but he didn’t want to stay. He wanted to go back. She gave him clothes and food and lots of stuff. And they feasted for a long time. And then one of the gods came to Calypso and said “let him go.” So, she let him go. Even though she didn’t want to. She wanted him to stay with her. So she gave him all the material like wood and stuff that he needed to build a ship. She also gave him food and wine for his voyage. And then he kept sailing.

Good answer!

Fina reads aloud to me for 6 or 7 minutes each day. She reads so well, it sort of surprises me!

Look at this apple she painted in water colour! (Then she added on the background, but the colours of the apple are impressive!) She greatly enjoys brush drawing.

Enjoy this glimpse into our outside time these last few weeks:

in the forest

on the frozen creek with a big crew from our outdoor playgroup

skiing on a big snow pile in our park

skating!

the morning of our latest blizzard

in the forest after the blizzard

Exams 1A term 1

We did our term 1 exams this week. Fina did really well!

She impressed me with her knowledge of Spanish (she was able to tell me the whole Hungry Caterpillar story in Spanish). She really enjoyed Vermeer. She loves the literature we are doing. She did not connect well with the Canadian History book we were using and we are switching to Brown's The Story of Canada for term 2. Her recitations were great. She can sing our folksongs, our hymns, our Spanish songs. And she is doing really well with solfège. She didn't do that well with Minn of the Mississippi, which seems normal for her with Holling C. Holling's books. For some reason, she narrates well enough during the lessons, but she just has trouble connecting with them at the larger scale. I am glad we took them!

Here is a small selection of some of Fina's answers.

Tell about the Contest of Miracles (Exodus):
So God said “tell pharaoh to let my people go and worship me. And if he says no, throw your staff down here and it will turn it into a snake and then pick it up and it will turn back into a staff. So he did. He asked “let my people go” and he said “no.” So he ended up doing the staff thing. So he went and threw his staff down and it turned into a snake. Aaron did that because Moses didn’t want to. So then Aaron did what God said to Moses. Moses told Aaron to do that. So Aaron threw down the staff and it turned into a snake. The magicians did that too, but Aaron’s ate them all up. All of them. 

Tell about one story from The Wonder Clock:
“The Step Mother Story” So, there was this girl and her step mother was evil and she wanted the girl to die or go away. Because her daughter was ugly, but she wanted her daughter to be the best. She didn’t want her step daughter to be the best. So she made this ball and it had writing that only she could understand on it. But it was enchanted that she needed to follow it. So the stepmother gave her this gold ball and said “this is your new plaything.” And she threw it and let the ball roll into a big, deep pit that she couldn’t get out of. So she followed it right into the pit and then she couldn’t get out. And then these gnomes or dwarves or whatever gave her all these jewels in the pit. [Do you remember how it ends?] Oh, they made her the queen of all of them. 

Tell all you can about Odysseus, his crew and the Cyclops:
So, Odysseus landed on this island and he wanted his men to go on the shore to investigate and they didn’t come back. So Odysseus went and there was a big cave with cheeses and big jars of milk and there were sheep and goats, I think, and they were going in and the Cyclops came. So they hid in a corner but he saw them. And then he said “what’s your name?” And Odysseus said “Nobody.” Then they decided “we can escape if he can’t see.” So they made one of his big branches really hot and stabbed his eye when he was asleep and then he couldn’t see. And he started yelling, and all the rest of the cyclops said “who’s hurting you?” when they came. “Nobody’s hurting me!” “Who’s murdering you?” “Nobody’s murdering me!” [laughing] Well, they didn’t come, because, like, “if nobody’s murdering you, then why are you yelling?” [laughing] When the sheep are out, he always feels them because he’s blind now because of the poke he got in the eye. So he would feel them when they came out, his sheep. So Odysseus got an idea. They would hold on, tied up, on the bottom of them, and then he wouldn’t feel them, so they got out. Odysseus got the big, big ram and the cyclops asked the big ram “Why are you going so slowly? Is it because you’re sad about your master because of his eye?”

Tell all you can about Vermeer's "Girl with Pearl Earring" -from memory

There is this girl, she has a pearl earring. It’s all black at the back. I think she has a bit of a yellow and blue thing on a ponytail, or her hair is up in a bun. And the thing is wrapped around her head and is draping down. It has a blue line on it and yellow. I can’t really describe her face. She’s not sad and not happy. You can see her teeth. She is very pretty. There’s nothing except her face and her neck. It’s all black. The pearl earring was very shiny and big, not quite like a pearl, sort of stretched. It is dark, but there is light pouring on her face. The earring had a little thing at the top of it that was pretty.

Describe in detail the birds we have been observing this term:
These are some of the birds that I have seen. Nuthatches, Chickadees, Blue Jays and this big thing that is red and brown. It’s very mean to little chickadees. So that’s what he does. He’s not nice at all. Blue Jays, when you see them, it looks like they are going to break the feeder, because they are so big. When they stand on the top of it, they can’t even fit. The cute little chickadees are so cute. They sort of swoop down, they jump right off the branch and swoop down, as if they jump right off the branch and swoop right down. They are so cute! I love them. They are probably my favourite bird. And nuthatch. They sort of cock their heads, so do chickadees. But I think nuthatches cock their heads a bit more. Chickadees are much smaller and have different colours and different facts than nuthatches. And they have these little teensie beaks and these cute little round faces. The nuthatch is all grey, different shades of grey, with a long beak. Can birds hear? With their ears? Blue Jays are not as bad as the “what’s it called” (the big red ones). People say that blue jays are bullies, but they aren’t as bad as that other guy. Remember when we saw the red guy and he was not being nice at all to the little chickadees. [vamps the bird’s discussion with each other.] When the blue jay is there, the chickadees all go away because they know he won’t let them have any food. In the winter, sometimes we get robins, but not at our feeder. They eat crab apples from the tree. They sit at the bottom of the tree, eating the crab apples. They sit at the bottom, eating. There are lots of robins when we see them. More than 10. You try to count them, but then you can’t, because they move. More than 10, more than 20.

*****

We finished up Kate DiCamillo's The Tale of Despereaux. We really enjoyed this book and are looking forward to reading her other books.

We read Alice Dalgleish's The Bears on Hemlock Mountain and it is a really cute story.

We are looking forward to a nice Christmas break with family.

See you next year!

Here are some parting pics of the last few days.