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

Mid-winter schooling

Perk of homeschooling #132: After having completed a full school day, Fina spent 2 hours painting.

She took her inspiration from Constable's "Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Grounds" (1823) with the arch-like trees!!!

She painted a detail of the nest

And that was before going out to play with her friends in the snow. We are so fortunate.

She worked on sewing using an old costume of hers. Here is some of her stitching!

Neat and even, wouldn't you say?

We read this cute book, Rocks in His Head by Carol Otis Hurst. It is about a dad who loves rocks and, after many trials in life, ends up as a curator in a museum.

We finished reading Mr. Popper's Penguins. It was very funny and cute. And we finished The Calico Captive and we loved it.  Now we are reading The Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare for our historical fiction and George MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin as our free read. Both are really exciting and great fun!

Fina worked a bit on her chalk pastel drawings

We did a great nature study through the window. We journaled about the snow that was falling and resting upon the crab apple tree and upon the apples. Fina dictated the following to me about what she was seeing:

There is snow on the tree. It doesn't look sticky, but I can't tell from in here. There are three cut-off branches plus three more and four more. The crabapples are all shrivelled up. There is a branch where you could sit. Some of the bark is shredding off. The bark is in little layers, not as waxy like a birch tree, but paper-y a bit, but harder and thicker, much thicker. There is snow falling and it is sitting on little pockets on the bark on the tree trunk. There is a thin layer of snow on top of the crabapples themselves, with a bit more in the middle of the top in the hole where the stem is.

Funnily, all morning there were birds at our feeder, but right now there aren't any in the crabapple tree at all.

The snow is falling sort of like little tiny flakes. Not "spitting" in snow. A bit faster than spitting in rain. The snow is coming a bit diagonally from the east. It is swirling a little bit. It must not be very windy. The flakes are not giant.

Over past the house, there is an evergreen tree - maybe a spruce. There doesn't seem to be snow on it, from here. But it is so far away and high up, it is hard to see.

There is a bush with dried leaves. There might be a titch of snow on them, but not enough. [Fina gets her binoculars] No, there is no snow on the leaves with the binoculars.

The sun is visible through the clouds, like a bit of each. The rest of the sky is all white, as white as the snow, because the snow isn't white. It's white-ish with a teeny bit of gray. There is no blue anywhere in the sky. 

Afternoon occupations! Fina was able to spend another few hours doing some brush drawing while listening to The Red Fairy Book by Andrew Lang on Librivox.

On Saturday, we spent about half an hour watching a Pileated Woodpecker on our crab apple tree through the window. We had never seen one, certainly not so close up. He was pecking and pecking at the rotten crab apples, with the same brute force he uses for a trunk of a tree. The colour of his crest was incredible!

This photo does not do him justice!

And we went for a nice walk with Fina's homeschooling dad in the forest and on the creek. Freezing cold, but the sun did peak out! It was -23 celsius (feels like -33 with the wind) but we lasted for almost two hours!

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The moment in math when your daughter realizes that she can count by 2s forever! She's at 300 now. Oh, what a grin on her face as she puzzles it out!!!

The way we are doing recitation this year, we cover less ground and Fina is less likely to memorize the poems, but she is enjoying the longer read narrations. As for poetry, she is really enjoying the poems we are reading. Again, I think she would enjoy memorizing some of them. I think a hybrid of the system we used to use with the system we are currently using might benefit Fina. Only because she enjoys memorizing poetry and reciting it from memory.

We didn't have a geography mapping lesson this week, but on Tuesday, Fina just decided she wanted to make a map of the meadow in our forest.

If you know our meadow at all, you will see that it is actually correct! She correctly depicted the hold the kids play in, the various wooded areas, the creek (in orange highlighter) etc. I was beyond impressed!

Our piano lessons are going very well.

Though we have some trouble connecting with (and narrating from) Minn of the Mississippi, today we read about the voyageurs and coureurs-de-bois and the canoe that Minn found at the bottom of Lake Pepin. That sort of thing, we get!

And I just have to recount this episode from this morning's lessons.  I'm taking painting lessons from my daughter! Haha! We were painting a spruce cone she brought home from outdoor playgroup this week and this is what she says to me:

"Your is not very realistic. You may want to look at mine, for the next time you want to paint a pine cone, for some inspiration. Yours is very pretty, but it really isn't very realistic, I'm sorry to say." And "Yours is too fuzzy. It looks like a piece of moss. It would be nice if it were a piece of moss. But not a cone."

Then, she proceeded to give me pointers on how to use certain techniques to make it look more realistic. I just had to laugh. Her conversation was in no way malicious, but completely in earnest. To be honest, hers does look more realistic. And I'm not surprised!

Fina's drawing

And mine!

I'm a good sport, I'd say. But she is the more talented painter!

Then, she continued on her theme from last week and painted this.

We're not doing the best with handicrafts during morning lessons (I've taken them out completely from the schedule), but because I am so fortunate, Fina finds time on her own to tackle some projects - during our evening family read-aloud time, or while I'm making lunch etc.

She made this little purse. She sewed on the button, then sewed the felt together at the sides, and I cut the button hole for her. Then she decided to crochet a long chain and she sewed it on the inside of the purse. And ta da!

Cute, right?
Fina got to skate for a little while. There was more snow than I was anticipating, and I cleared a little bit of it with my tiny shovel, but she was skating just fine in 3cm of snow! It is pretty cold but it is better than it has been lately.

finishing up term 1

A snapshot of our days this week.

Playing in the not-quite-yet-frozen creek.

One of Fina's handicrafts. She loom knitted herself a neck warmer / ear warmer.

She was working on her chalk pastels and wanted to draw this as a non-lesson, free drawing. It is really lovely in person.

When it is a million below with very high winds, you do what you have got to do to go skiing!

Skiing with friends on a much milder day.

Fina is really enjoying solfège. She has got sol-mi-la down really well!
We finished up with our picture study of six of Vermeer's paintings. We really like the ones we have studied! (Thanks to online recommendations, I rigged up this ribbon and glue gunned clothespegs to it and, voilà!)

We studied Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and it was a great piece to listen to and talk about.

She has enjoyed the books we are reading and continues to give great narrations. Her Bible narrations, especially, are great this term. We are reading about the plagues in Exodus and have had some lively discussions about those.

We are finishing up Kate DiCamillo's The Tale of Despereaux and we just love it. She is such an engaging author!

Next week? Exams!

knitting and skiing

We finished reading The Courage of Sarah Noble and our moving on to Calico Captive by Elizabeth George Speare as our historical fiction reading. We read the first chapter and it is riveting. I fear it may be a little mature for Fina (as there is a young woman who is being wooed by a man) but she told me she liked it and didn't want to stop!

I purchased three McGuffey readers and we are quickly making our way through them.

Fina is enjoying her knitting.

And continues to enjoy her brush drawing.

You might not be able to see that corn cob, but it is so detailed!

I love how in a CM education, you read slowly and spread out. It can seem counter-intuitive, but there is something wonderful about picking up a book, after having set it aside for one week. We are experiencing this with Rosemary Sutcliffe's The Wanderings of Odysseus. Fina loves it and easily picks back up from where we left off.

We had a lovely jaunt in our forest on Friday afternoon. Fina found a great tree limb to sit in!

One the weekend, Fina finally convinced me to let her go skiing. (I keep discouraging her, telling her it would not be fun to ski on the iced over slush and that she should wait for the next snow.) Well, did she prove me wrong! She had a lovely night-time ski on Saturday in our park and again on Monday night in a wind storm. We are still waiting on that new snow!

We've spent some lovely time watching our window bird feeder over the last few days. On Monday, we actually saw a blue jay come to it many times (though he is so big, almost too big for it), as well as the black capped chickadees and nuthatches who are our regular guests. Wonderful!

Another proof of recitation leads to memorization. We've been working on "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost. We've only spent less than 10 minutes, 4 times (once a week) and today, Fina was able to recite it almost perfectly on Monday!

We finished reading The Cricket in Times Square by George Selden, as one of our free reads. It is a cute story and we both enjoyed it. I think we're going to try Kate DiCamillo's The Tale of Despereaux next.

We started some history things this week. I started our family's history chart (outlining the years from when Fina's homeschooling dad and I met to the present) and Fina started her own life's history chart, from her birth to the present). We spent about 15 minutes filling in some information and it went really well. This leads up to other history tools.

Today, on our way home from outdoor playgroup, we stopped by our town's nativity scene that was just put up this weekend. They don't put Jesus in until Christmas.

Thanks for joining us!

snow!

Here is a little summary of our last few weeks:

We started our Architecture lessons! I found V.M. Hillyer's elusive A Child's History of Art (including the three sections on Painting, Sculpture and Architecture) at a used book sale in September and I was so excited! We did the first chapter on Egyptian houses of the dead: pyramids and tombs cut from rock. Fina really enjoyed it!

Fina absolutely loves Wanderings of Odysseus. She isn't squeamish, like other kids can be, about Cyclops banging their heads on the ground and crushing their brain etc.

For our handicrafts, Fina is continuing to work on her loom knitting, knitting with two needles (that  grandma taught her), and whittling.

We started reading The Courage of Sarah Noble as part of our historical fiction. And we started reading George Vancouver, a biography, to go along with our Canadian history.

Fina is loving doing the brush-drawing work. She paints something almost every day.

We saw this manequin at the ROM last month and she wanted to paint the Pharoah's wife.

Fina also greatly enjoys drawing with chalk pastels.

Her cursive work is coming along nicely. We are learning a lot through copywork. I just pick a line or a poem from her readings and she works on that, one word at a time.

Fina reads aloud for at least 10 minutes every day. She is progressing by leaps and bounds.

Aside from our poetry compilation, we have been reading some poems by Robert Frost in Poetry for Young People: Robert Frost. She is reciting his winter poems wonderfully!

Her Spanish is coming along nicely. We work on our story, our song, our nursery rhyme and associated vocab. And she loves it. She has also created a strong relationship with a certain Topo Gigio album while visiting my parents (and their record player). Thanks to YouTube, we found a copy of it. Further continuing our Spanish and Italian lessons through song!

We are in full winter over here, but had a temperature respite this week. These are the kids at outdoor playgroup. They were actually able to build snow structures!

This morning, before we started our school, we spent a long while observing the birds at our window feeder. We saw many chickadees, who darted back and forth, and then two blue jays came. They scared away the chickadees who did not return for a long while. For our drawing lesson at the end of our morning, Fina drew this chickadee, first from memory (she laughed and laughed, because it looks like a seagull!) and then from her field guide.

It actually wasn't terrible. She got the cap and the neck part quite right, actually. It is just the body shape that was off.

In other news, I finally started keeping my own Book of Centuries. I'm using Laurie Bestvater's. I have another one, by Riverbend Press, ready for Fina when she is older. My first entry? 1576, Martin Frobisher's first voyage. It is all very exciting!

Ontario adventures (including the ROM)

Over the last few weeks, Fina and I had a nice trip (some business, some leisure) visiting our family in Ontario.

Before we went, she watercolour painted these for her cousins and grandparents.

We love this polar bear RCMP at our airport.

While we were in Ontario, we did some nature study about this Honey Locust (and many other things).

Fina always loves the ROM.

the subway station at the ROM

We found this cool exhibit with lots of paintings by Norval Morrisseau (the painter of Fina's favourite painting from the WAG, from when she was little)

One of Norval Morrisseau's painting

We went to the Chrysanthemum Show, which is always fun to see!

We visited Parliament Hill and learned a lot about our government. We were able to attend Question Period and saw our Prime Ministers and MPs "collaborate." We were unable to get any pics of that, as we had to go through security and had to check our devices. Security is taken very seriously at Parliament Hill.

Centere Block

The East Block (our library has a flag that flew there)

The Rotunda

Grandma taught Fina how to knit! She really enjoyed that.

Fina climbed grandma's fir tree.

And, later, nonna's maple tree

She planted one of the seeds/beans from the Honey Locust, and, within a few weeks, we had this!

We finished reading Clyde Robert Bulla's A Lion to Guard Us as part of our historical fiction. The story is really captivating and both Fina and I enjoyed it!

We took advantage and had both sets of grandparents tell Fina a bit about their lives, when they were kids, looking through photo albums etc.

As of October 31, we completed our third year of the 1000HoursOutside challenge. Fina hit 1338.5 hours outside from November 1 2016. (On Oct 31 2016, she was at 1384 and in 2015, she hit 1084). I'm not going to keep track anymore. I think we've got it!

And we came home to this!

We did our lessons today. Fina did two drawing lessons with chalk pastels. And some watercolour painting "from her imagination" as well.

reeds

poppy

We started reading through Shakespeare's Twelfth Night (we saw that play a few months ago).  We listened to an audio version. I think I might alternate the audio version with my reading aloud.

While we were away, I picked up a bunch of books at a big used book sale. I found three of the McGuffey Eclectic Primer Reading Series, so she started reading one of those today.