AO year 1, week 22, December 14

Yesterday evening, we read Blossom Comes Home by James Herriot and Fina narrated throughout.

We started reading Olga da Polga by Michael Bond (who authored Paddington). It is a cute story about a guinea pig.

We have also continued reading from The Pink Fairy Book, our other free read.

This morning, we listened to some Schubert over breakfast.

We started our new folksong, "She's Like the Swallow." It is a Canadian folksong (from Newfoundland). I had never actually heard it before, though I remember there being a piano piece based on it in one of my piano books. The lyrics are terrible. I think we'll stick to verses 1-3 and forget about the betrayal and the girl dying. All the youtube videos I found of it were very slow and dreary (no wonder!) and Fina didn't like them. So we just sing it ourselves at a nice pace!  I got the song from this lovely collection of folksongs which I borrowed from the library, The Penguin Book of Canadian Folksongs, edited by Edith Fowke. It has the melody and the lyrics.

Fina completed her unit exam in math. She did a great job. We also started our next lesson, lesson 11 about shapes and skip counting by 2s. Both these things are review from last year and she flew through lesson 11A.

I read Luke 1:5-20, 57-66 (the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth and John) and Fina narrated it very well.

We sang our hymn, "O Come, O Come Emmanuel."

I read the story of "The Vain Jackdaw and the Borrowed Feathers" from Aesop's Fables and Fina narrated it.

We worked on our recitation. Fina now knows the "What is love?" speech from Twelfth Night.  I read chapter 17 from How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare, the chapter pertaining to this passage.
We continued to work on the Parable of the Mustard Seed.

Fina reviewed her upper case cursive letters and we learned the letter I.

Her cursive is really good. We will continue to work on doing our best at all times. But she has a nice hand, I think. Certainly better than mine!

We read a poem from The Oxford Book of Children's Verse.  We still haven't found one to memorize. But we are enjoying reading them. I usually reread the previous day's poems and then one (or more) new one.

Fina read pages 36-40 of Tony's Birds aloud to me. She is doing a great job!

We read chapter 10 of The Burgess Bird Book, about Redwing the Blackbird and Yellow Wing the Flicker (who is of the wood pecker family). We found both the birds online and listened to their calls.
I asked Fina if she wanted to paint one of the birds, but she is reluctant to pull out her watercolours. I am not concerned. I don't want to force her right now, so I'll let it be for a bit. She loves nature study. I think she is worried about painting an animal (we've mostly done flora this far), though this would be straight out of a field guide.

Fina did some Lego and played the afternoon away.

AO year 1, week 22, December 12

We have had a busy few days, with a Christmas banquet and a Christmas dinner with friends. Fina did a bit of finger knitting for a ribbon on a gift.

We started the day by reading one story from The Pink Fairy, our current free read. Dad has also been reading A Bear Called Paddington to Fina as her bedtime free read.

I read Matthew 1:18-24 and Fina narrated it. It is our gospel reading for this Sunday, the fourth Sunday of Advent.

We did the Liturgical Year section of our catechism book, including the Advent section (pages 151-156).

Fina read aloud the Parable of the Mustard Seed. Because she isn't such a strong reader yet, I think it is hard for her to memorize it this way. I will continue trying this method for the rest of the week and, if she still doesn't know it, we will do our regular "repeat one line three times" til you know it and then move on to the next line. It works well for Shakespeare.

Fina also recited "What is Love?" and "Out o' tune, sir" from Twelfth Night.

Fina did the first two pages of the Unit Exam #1 for Math. Two more pages to go. It reviews the first 10 lessons. She wanted the timer on, so I gave her 10 minutes. She was done in 7 minutes, so she used her remaining 3 minutes to catch up on some of her countdown-to-Christmas lego. (We have been busy these last few days and fell behind with it).

We read chapter 17 of Paddle to the Sea and Fina narrated it. I like how they equate Lake Michigan to a squash with leaves. It does kind of look like that, right?

We sang our folksong again, "My Paddle / Land of the Silver Birch."  Fina is singing along now, most of the time, which is great.

I read the story of "Maximillian and the Gooseherd" from Fifty Famous Stories. It was a funny story of a king who wasn't really able to care for some geese while the little gooseherd boy ran to fetch the King's book.  Fina gave a great narration.

I read "The Monkey and the Cat" from Aesop's Fables. Silly monkey, tricks the cat to scoop the chestnuts out of the fire by flattering her and then eats all the chestnuts and leaves nothing for the cat. Fina narrated it.

I read poems 45-47 from The Oxford Book of Children's Verse. Some are by Isaac Watts. We are still in the early section, but these poems are great fun! I think I did the right thing by skipping the first few chapters.

Fina reviewed her uppercase cursive letters, from A-G, and we learned the letter H. She is flying through these cursive letters!

We listened to some Schubert while Fina worked on her cursive.

Fina read four pages from Tony's Birds aloud to me. She laughed and laughed as Tony figured out that the bird was a Bluejay.

We sang "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" together.

Fina then did an episode of cosmic kids yoga. We hadn't done one in months, so it was good for her to get back into it.

Late in the afternoon, Fina went out to play for a few hours in the dark, freezing cold. She loved it!
At one point I saw her hanging from the top of a 1 metre snow pile, using sticks as climbing hooks and hanging from them in the snow, as if she were climbing the Alps, I guess! Fun!

AO year 1, week 20, December 2

We listened to some Zecchino D'Oro over breakfast.

We started with our math. Fina has been wanting to use a timer to do if she can get one lesson done in 10 minutes. She finished 10C just a few seconds after the timer rang.
Fina reluctantly tried her current recitation. She knows the first two lines (though she thinks she does not).
I read the next two poems from Now We Are Six, "Pinkle Purr" and "Wind on the Hill."

Fina learned her upper case cursive D. And we continued working on the C.

We did chapter 13 of her catechism, talking about forgiveness and reconciliation with God and with others.

We read all of Janet Lunn's Laura Secord: A Story of Courage. This is one of our three Canadian replacement biographies. We stopped throughout for Fina to narrate. She really enjoyed the story. The book has great illustrations and is written in a clear, yet exciting, way. I know it is a CM faux pas to read the whole thing in one sitting, but I chose to do it today. We don't often do that. We were both enjoying it and she was giving such good narrations.

Fina read aloud the next 5 pages from Tony's Birds.  She is reading very well.

When we bought the Lego Disney Castle, we got this Christmas build up set for free.  There are 24 little builds. We started it yesterday.  Here are day 1 and day 2's creations.

Sailboat

Reindeer (in front of our old Lego calendar)

Fina got to play outside with her friend K for a few hours in the evening.

We did our Jesse tree devotionals as a family after supper (we had to do yesterday and today's readings and ornaments since we missed it last night).  We have been singing "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" during the day as our hymn, but tonight we sang it as part of our advent family devotional time. Fina then wanted to read and sing all 7 verses for dad. It was incredible!

Then she pulled out two balls of yarn and taught dad how to fingerknit.

And they did some Lego work together as well. Now they are upstairs, in bed, reading Paddington.

We are finished up week 20 and I'm looking forward to week 21. I just noticed that even our chapter from Fifty Famous Stories is about Napoleon. You can't even plan this kind of serendipity. (Well, you can if you are doing unit studies, but this just happened!)

Thanks for joining us today.

September 19, AO year 1, week 17

Here we are, at the start of week 17.

Yesterday, on the way to and from church, Fina finished embroidering this lovely thing. (Shhh, it's a surprise for someone, so pretend you did NOT see it here!) Look at us, Sunday handicrafts, just as Charlotte Mason intended!

Today, Fina and dad started the day by reading from Lewis' The Silver Chair over breakfast. They are almost finished the book.

Fina did some creative Lego as I did some chores while listening to some Schubert.

I read the story of David choosing Solomon as his successor (1 Kings 1:28-40; 6:1-14, 38) in chunks and Fina gave an excellent narration.

Then Fina read a few pages from Plenty of Fish aloud to me as  I was hanging laundry.

We sang our hymn "A Place at the Table."

I read two Aesop's Fables, "The Ass, the Fox and the Lion" and "The Birds, the Beasts and the Bat." Fina narrated each of them. She doesn't connect very well with the Aesop's Fables, which is surprising. But she still narrated them and does enjoy them.

We sang our folksong "I've been working on the railroad."

We did some cursive work.

We read two new poems from Now We Are Six, "Binker" and "Cherry Stones." Both very cute.
We did some math. 5X, 6X, 7X and the first page of the test for unit 7.

She was asked to make a word problem for 6+2=8. This is what she dictated to me:

"Twilight had 6 apples. Then she asked for 2 more. How many apples does Twilight have now?

Then Fina did some recitation. "Now Fair Hippolyta" and the first half of "What country friends is this?" from Twelfth Night.

This afternoon, we are going out to the creek for some nature study. Thanks for reading along with us!

Leading up to August 10

Well, Fina is reading up a storm! We haven't been doing school work per se, but she is reading many little books every day and loving it.

We have had many more beach days, including on July 19, my last post. It was so hot that day at our outdoor playgroup, that the kids were listless (which NEVER happens). A bunch of families only stayed for a bit and then left. We were left with our good friend L and her kids L,  and S. So we decided to make our own beach day. So off we went to St Malo beach for the afternoon and evening.

Look at that sky! We had a huge storm the next day. A HUGE storm!

Fina built many Lego items, free style.

This was at our local Lego store's 1 year anniversary celebration.

And this, the pièce de résistance! She built this and then dad helped her (or she helped him, I guess) enter it into the program Lego Digital Designer and now we have an instruction booklet as a .pdf for how to build her set, the "Star Wars Helicopter Pilot."

It took them hours to enter each piece into the software, but they had so much fun!

She also made a little BB8.

We have had a great many, very fun, beach days.

She even found a four-leaf clover!

On an inpromptu meet up at the park, one of our friends found a little baby bird who had fallen out of its nest. So the whole lot of us rallied around to get it back up in its nest.

We went fishing with our good friends L, K and C. It was our first time fishing. I caught a perch. Fina hooked her own worm, and wanted to keep hooking everybody else's worm too!

We got our homeschooling number, after we notified the government of our intention to homeschool Fina. We have signed up MB education library and we also have access to teacher discounts at certain stores as well as special pricing for things like the zoo!!!

We did manage to squeeze in chapters 19 and 21 of our catechism book.

Playing under a bridge in our creek.

Carrots from K's garden.

Climbing on

anything she can!

We have been so blessed with the lack of mosquitoes these last few weeks. We have been spending as much time outdoors as possible and having a great time!

Next week, we are going to go tent camping for two nights with our friends E, J, S and E. It is going to be such fun!

Thanks for reading. I hope you too are enjoying your summer!

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.